The Bureau of Indian standards (BIS) on December 21, 2022, notified the framework to safeguard and protect consumer interest from fake and deceptive reviews in e-commerce. BIS issued the framework on ‘Online Consumer Reviews — Principles and Requirements for their Collection, Moderation, and Publication’ on November 23, 2022. The framework provides the following:
• These standards are voluntary and are applicable to every online platform which publishes consumer reviews.
• The standard prescribes multiple methods to verify whether the review author is a real person and confirm the identity of the review author. These include the following namely: –
1) Verifying the email address by sending one or more emails and awaiting a response.
2) Verifying the review author’s domain name and email address extension in comparison with the online review subject and/or the name of the evaluated product or service.
3) Sending an email that asks the review author to confirm their registration by clicking on the link.
4) Verification by a program that protects the website.
5) Verification by telephone call or SMS.
6) Verification of identification by Single Sign-On (SSO).
7) Verification of identification by geolocation or IP address.
8) Verification by the review administrator that publishing the author’s email address is valid prior to publishing the first review.
9) Verification by using a single user per email address.
10) Verification using the captcha system.
