New rules banning fake online reviews came into force on 6 April, breach of which could lead to hefty penalties of up to 10% of annual global turnover.
Most of the consumer law provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (the “DMCC Act”) are now in force, and on 4 April 2025 the CMA published guidance on many of the provisions, including those relating to fake reviews: Fake reviews: CMA208 - GOV.UK
A key change that the DMCC Act makes to the previous legislation (the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations) is that the DMCC Act includes prohibitions relating to fake, misleading or concealed incentivised consumer reviews. The CMA recognises that these new prohibitions will require businesses to make changes to their systems and compliance programmes, and the CMA has confirmed that during the first three months of the new regime, it will focus on supporting businesses with their compliance efforts rather than enforcement.
What does the DMCC Act say about fake reviews?
Schedule 20 to the DMCC Act lists 32 commercial practices which are considered inherently unfair and therefore are prohibited in all circumstances, regardless of their impact on consumers’ transactional decisions. Most of these practices were also banned under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations, but there are a few changes and new banned practices that have been added, including in relation to reviews.
Schedule 20, paragraph 13 specifically prohibits:
- Submitting, or commissioning another person to submit or write, a fake consumer review or a consumer review that conceals the fact that it has been incentivised. A consumer review is defined as a review of a product, trader or other matter relevant to a transactional decision, and a fake consumer review is defined as a consumer review that purports to be, but is not, based on a person’s genuine experience. The CMA guidance states that:
- Fake reviews can be positive or negative and are prohibited regardless of the form they take or the medium on which they are published.
- Commissioning reviews can take various forms, including monetary payments, discounts, invitations to events, free products, free stays, or any other form of reward. It is possible to incentivise others to review products, but the review must be prominently and unambiguously labelled as incentivised (usually as an advert) and the review must still be genuine.
- Publishing consumer reviews, or consumer review information, in a misleading way. Consumer review information is defined as ‘information that is derived from, or is influenced by, consumer reviews’. The CMA guidance states that:
- Consumer review information usually indicates the quality, value or performance of products or traders. For example, aggregated information in the form of overall ratings, summaries and rankings.
- The banned practice includes suppressing negative reviews, cherry-picking positive reviews for publication, and relying on out-dated (but genuine) reviews which no longer reflect the current product.
- It also includes presenting reviews of a different product to the one the consumer is considering (known as review hijacking or review merging). Whether merged reviews will be considered misleading will depend on the extent to which any differences in the merged products result in a materially different experience for the consumer. For example, if different sized products are of different quality, merging their reviews could mislead consumers.
- Offering services to commission fake reviews or misleading reviews, or offering to facilitate the submission of fake reviews, concealed incentivised or misleading reviews. The CMA guidance states that:
- This includes services such as running social media groups to recruit individuals willing to post reviews, selling reviews which have been generated by software, and promising reimbursements or products in exchange for five-star reviews.
- Services which facilitate the submission of fake reviews include, for example, offering services that increase the chance of a fake review being successfully posted on a platform or website by bypassing fake review detection measures.
These prohibitions are not mutually exclusive and they do not all have to be present in order to prove an infringement of Schedule 20, paragraph 13.
The CMA guidance confirms that anyone who engages in the commercial practice of either submitting or commissioning banned reviews will be in breach. This includes professional reviewers, journalists, content creators (such as bloggers, influencers, online streamers, celebrities, and social media personalities), marketing companies, and individuals acting on behalf of traders.
Prevention and removal of banned reviews and false or misleading consumer review information
In addition to the prohibitions above, the DMCC Act creates a positive obligation on anyone who publishes or provides access to consumer reviews or consumer review information (what the CMA refers to as a “Publisher”) to take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent and remove from publication fake consumer reviews and consumer reviews that conceal the fact that they have been incentivised (together “Banned Reviews”), and false or misleading consumer review information.
In the CMA’s view, reasonable and proportionate measures that businesses will need to implement include the following, although the CMA has recognised that compliance may look different for different businesses:
- Prevention and Removal Policies: Publishers should have clear, published policies on the prevention and removal of Banned Reviews and false or misleading consumer review information.
- Risk assessments: Publishers should conduct regular risk assessments to identify and address the risks of Banned Reviews and false or misleading consumer review information appearing on their media.
- Detection procedures: Publishers should implement measures to proactively detect Banned Reviews and avoid the presentation of false or misleading consumer review information, such as controls over review sources, regular checks, and third-party notification systems.
- Investigation: Publishers should have an established process for investigating suspicious reviews and information, ensuring proportionate and timely investigations.
- Removal and sanctions: Publishers should take appropriate steps to prevent consumers from being misled by Banned Reviews and false or misleading consumer review information, including by removing Banned Reviews and applying sanctions to those responsible.
- Internal Evaluations: Publishers should regularly assess the effectiveness of their prevention and removal processes and address any identified inadequacies.
What the CMA considers reasonable and proportionate will vary depending on individual circumstances, but compliance will require businesses to take an outcomes-focussed approach. Businesses which pose the highest risks to consumers should implement the most extensive measures to address Banned Reviews and false or misleading consumer information.
Comment
The new DMCC Act provisions in relation to reviews significantly increase the risk for businesses which have poor practices in relation to consumer reviews. Whilst the CMA has confirmed that in the first instance their focus will be on supporting businesses with compliance as opposed to enforcement, the CMA has only committed to this position for the first three months, and therefore efforts should be made to work towards compliance promptly. We expect the CMA to take action to enforce the new prohibitions in the future (particularly given that this is an area where the CMA has already carried out enforcement in reliance on the previous law, which did not include explicit provisions relating to consumer reviews). However, in the short to medium term, we expect that the CMA will focus on the most egregious practices relating to consumer reviews only.
Breach of the new prohibitions relating to consumer reviews would not result in criminal sanctions, but the CMA is able to determine whether there has been a breach (without recourse to the courts) and impose fines of up to 10% of annual global turnover. For more information on the CMA’s enforcement process, see Judge, Jury and Executioner: CMA Final Consumer Enforcement Guidance.
For further information on this or any other consumer law issue, please do not hesitate to contact one of our specialists. Our previous articles on the consumer protection provisions of the DMCC Act can be found here, with further information on the digital markets and competition law aspects here.
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