I’ve been curious about something lately and thought this might be the best place to get some insight. As someone who frequently uses a VPN for privacy reasons, I’ve wondered if VPN users have the ability to make unlimited reviews on platforms like Google, TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc.
My understanding is that these platforms sometimes have restrictions or checks in place to prevent abuse, such as limiting the number of reviews from a single IP address. However, since VPNs route your internet traffic through servers in different locations, does this mean a VPN user could theoretically create multiple accounts or leave numerous reviews without being detected?
Theoretically maybe but *if* it worked you would still be limited by the number of locations your vpn provider has. And google has a habit of refusing traffic from known vpn addresses.
No, it doesn’t matter what your IP address is because you can only write one review on your Google account per location. Is a person going to waste time logging into multiple accounts to leave multiple reviews?
This. I’ve had colleagues supporting clients that created separate Gmail accounts for each client. Typically Google will end up eventually banning the entire batch.
Phone numbers that Google would accept are not free. Hundreds of new accounts will cost you hundreds of dollars. VPN IPs are low quality, so you’d get bombarded by captchas, your accounts will get flagged as suspicious, overall, it’s a headache.
Sure, if they want to take the time to do. Google has some kind of detection algorithm for unusual activity. There was a restaurant who complained about customers not leaving tips on Facebook, then that post went viral, so there was so many negative reviews on Google maps. The reviews were blocked by Google. I checked the reviews a week later and all the negative reviews the past week disappear.