If you’re a regular Amazon user, you’ve probably had issues sifting the real, quality goods from low-quality imports or scams on the platform. The epidemic of fake online product reviews doesn’t exactly help the matter, Amazon said in 2024 that it takes down over 275 million suspected fake reviews annually.
A recently launched extension, dubbed Knockoff, offers a potential solution to these issues and has recently gone viral on social media.
The app gives users the choice between having these potentially dubious goods dimmed in grayscale, marked, or having them hidden altogether from search results. The app draws from a database of 5,000 brands which it considers to be reliable, approving them automatically.
Knockoff then uses what it terms the “linguistic signature” of low quality brands including ALL-CAPS text, vanishing vowels, unpronounceable consonant runs to identify potentially bad listings. In addition, it also uses a community reporting model for brands.
Users can choose between three filtering levels. Relaxed catches only the notorious offenders, while Standard adds suspect names and unbranded listings. Strict allows only recognized brands. The extension is available for Firefox, Chrome and Chromium-based web browsers such as Microsoft Edge, Opera and Brave.
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You don’t need to create an account to use the app, and the Knockoff says it doesn’t collect any data for analytics.
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Issues surrounding fake reviews aren’t likely to go away anytime soon. The rise of AI bots means it’s harder to tell real people from manipulated campaigns than ever before. Meanwhile, Mozilla shut down Fakespot in July 2025, the largest database of fake reviews on the internet.
If you’re not interested in adding another browser extension, but want to ensure you’re only buying high quality products, there are plenty of manual ways of ensuring you can spot fake reviews. These include being on the look out for very brief five-star and one-star reviews, ones which lack natural-sounding language, or listings that have similar-seeming reviews all posted on the same day.
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I’ve been a PC gamer since you had to install games from multiple CD-ROMs by hand. As a reporter, I’m passionate about the intersection of tech and human lives. I’ve covered everything from crypto scandals to the art world, as well as conspiracy theories, UK politics, and Russia and foreign affairs.
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