Introduction

Following the interview published on Barry KDP’s YouTube channel (link below), the topic of fake reviewer accounts operated by Virtual Assistants has generated intense discussion in the self-publishing community:

👉 Click here to watch the interview on YouTube with Barry KDP

Since that interview, we have received dozens and dozens of emails asking for deeper clarification on what is happening and why so many reviews have been removed in recent months.

That’s why we decided to publish this article.

Here we explain, in a clear and structured way, why VA-posted reviews have always been one of the most recurring and dangerous factors behind book blocks and KDP account terminations across the history of Amazon self-publishing.

The difference today is scale.

Starting around August 2025, Amazon’s enforcement systems became dramatically more effective at identifying and shutting down these networks, leading to an abnormal volume of review deletions with statistically significant consequences for both books and KDP accounts.

To understand why this is happening, we need to start with historical context.

1. Historical Context – The Role of Virtual Assistants in the Self-Publishing Industry

For many years, Virtual Assistants (VAs) have played a significant role in the self-publishing industry. This is not something worth hiding or denying. The reason was simple: they were able to post Amazon reviews extremely easily and at very low cost, often for around $1.50 per review. This created a large underground market where publishers could quickly inflate the social proof of their books.

In some cases, Virtual Assistants were not only used to post reviews but also to manipulate other aspects of Amazon’s ecosystem. One of the most well-known examples occurred between 2016 and 2017, when some publishers discovered a bug in the Kindle Unlimited system. Through coordinated activity performed by large numbers of accounts, it was possible to artificially generate an extremely high volume of pages read on specific books. This resulted in massive royalty payments, allowing some publishers to earn significant amounts of money by exploiting this vulnerability.

Amazon eventually detected the exploit and fixed the bug within a few months. Once investigations began, all publishers who had abused the system were banned from KDP, and their accounts were permanently terminated.

After this episode, the specific Kindle Unlimited exploit disappeared, but Virtual Assistants continued to operate in the review ecosystem for many years. At the time, Amazon’s detection systems were still relatively limited. Occasionally, especially during the Q4 period, Amazon would perform large review clean-ups that resulted in the removal of some suspicious reviews. Within the self-publishing community, these events became commonly known as “flag seasons.” However, these removals were usually sporadic and concentrated in specific periods of the year, meaning the overall system remained relatively permissive for a long time.

2. The Major Crackdown of Late 2022

A major turning point occurred toward the end of 2022.

During that period, it had become extremely common to see books published only a few weeks earlier already accumulating hundreds, and sometimes even thousands, of ratings and reviews. The cost of obtaining ratings had dropped dramatically, in some cases reaching as little as $0.25 per rating.

This situation eventually triggered one of the largest enforcement actions in the history of Amazon KDP.

In a single day, Amazon banned thousands of KDP accounts for review manipulation.

The impact on the self-publishing industry was immediate. From that moment on, the use of Virtual Assistants to generate reviews was widely considered extremely dangerous, and most serious publishers stopped relying on them.

As a result, what had once been a massive underground market for fake reviews rapidly shrank. For a long period, almost no experienced publisher was willing to risk using Virtual Assistants again to post reviews on their books.

Discuss These Strategies With Other Publishers

Amazon reviews are one of the most important elements for every self-publisher, yet this topic is often discussed only superficially and many authors are left with unanswered questions.

For this reason, we created a community entirely dedicated to Amazon book reviews and review acquisition strategies, where publishers can openly discuss these topics and share their experiences.

Inside the community you can ask any question, explore the different strategies used in the industry, and request opinions or comparisons between the services most commonly used in the self-publishing market.

Members of the community may also occasionally receive early access to beta features and new tools that BookVillage is developing.

👉 Join the BookVillage Skool Community

Our founder, Adriano, is also active there and regularly participates in discussions to provide clarifications and additional insights.

3. The Return of Virtual Assistants Through Review Platforms

The situation began to change again with the rise of review exchange platforms.

These platforms introduced internal systems based on coins or credits, allowing users to earn rewards by posting reviews for other authors and then use those rewards to receive reviews on their own books.

At this point, some publishers started experimenting again with Virtual Assistants. The reasoning seemed simple: instead of using VAs to post reviews directly on their own books, they could use them to review other authors’ books inside these platforms. In return, the account would accumulate coins, which could later be used to receive reviews from other users.

At first, this appeared to reduce the perceived risk. Publishers believed they were no longer directly exposing their own books to suspicious reviewer accounts.

At the same time, hiring a Virtual Assistant was extremely easy. These services could be found on large freelance marketplaces such as Upwork or Fiverr, where VAs offered to manage the entire workflow: selecting books, pretending to read them, writing reviews, and operating inside review platforms on behalf of the publisher.

As this strategy began spreading again within the self-publishing community, the use of Virtual Assistants quickly expanded. Within a relatively short period, a very large portion of users on these platforms were relying on VAs to handle their reviewing activity.

The scale of this market is also visible directly on freelance platforms. On Upwork and Fiverr, it is possible to see the revenue generated by many of these freelancers. Even considering that their accounts are sometimes banned for illicit activity and later recreated from scratch, the numbers still reveal the magnitude of the phenomenon.

In total, this activity has generated several hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue on just these two platforms alone, clearly demonstrating how widespread and organized this practice became over time.

At the same time, the first warning signs started becoming visible. By the first half of 2025, many publishers began noticing that an increasing number of reviews appearing on their books, particularly Standard Unverified reviews, Kindle Unlimited reviews, and Verified Free Promo reviews, contained text that often made little sense, appeared extremely generic, or looked rushed and poorly written.

For publishers who had been in the industry for several years, the connection was relatively easy to identify. These reviews strongly resembled the type of content typically produced by Virtual Assistants managing multiple accounts and posting reviews at high speed across many different books.

4. How Virtual Assistants Obtain and Operate Their Amazon Accounts

To understand why these reviews are so dangerous, it is essential to understand how many of the Amazon accounts used by Virtual Assistants are actually created and operated. In most cases, these accounts do not belong to real readers behaving normally on Amazon. Instead, they are created or obtained through methods that already place them in high-risk categories from Amazon’s perspective.

The two most common methods are the following:

(A) Stolen Amazon Accounts

In some cases, Virtual Assistants gain access to existing Amazon accounts belonging to real users, often when the original account owner has not enabled two-factor authentication. Once access is obtained, the VA begins using the account to perform activities such as posting reviews or making purchases.

Eventually, the legitimate owner notices unauthorized activity or purchases and reports the issue. When this happens, the process typically involves both the bank and Amazon, leading to the payment method being blocked and the account being flagged for suspicious activity. From that point onward, the account becomes permanently marked inside Amazon’s systems.

(B) Newly Created Accounts Using Compromised Credit Cards

As of March 2026, the method used in the vast majority of cases involves creating new Amazon accounts using compromised credit card data.

In particular, there is currently a widespread phenomenon involving stolen or cracked credit cards belonging to customers of the Royal Bank of Canada. Due to a specific weakness in how address verification works with certain cards issued by the Royal Bank of Canada, the billing address verification process often does not function correctly with this type of card.

This means that Virtual Assistants can create new Amazon accounts, insert a compromised Royal Bank of Canada card number, and associate it with completely random names and billing addresses, while the transaction is still initially accepted by Amazon’s payment system.

However, the real card owner eventually notices the unauthorized charge and contacts their bank to dispute the transaction. The bank refunds the customer and then requests reimbursement from Amazon. At that point, the transaction becomes part of a fraud-related investigation, and the Amazon account involved is flagged.

What makes this pattern particularly problematic is that the same payment issuer and the same category of compromised cards are repeatedly used across thousands of accounts. From Amazon’s perspective, this creates a very clear behavioral pattern linking large networks of accounts to both review manipulation and financial fraud, making them significantly easier to identify and eventually shut down.

5. How These Accounts Become Eligible to Post Reviews

Once these accounts are created and begin making their first purchases, Amazon’s systems quickly detect abnormal behavior.

In many cases, these newly created accounts start by making digital purchases that are later refunded and formally disputed by the bank because the payment method was compromised. From Amazon’s perspective, this pattern is a clear signal of fraudulent activity.

As a result, these accounts are flagged almost immediately and placed under close monitoring.

Another important consequence follows from this situation. Once the payment method has been reported and blocked, these accounts can no longer perform normal purchases. Because of this, they begin posting only reviews that do not require a real purchase.

In practice, this means they almost exclusively publish:

• Unverified reviews
• Free promotion reviews for ebooks

This behavior creates an extremely obvious pattern for Amazon: new accounts with suspicious payment activity that suddenly begin posting reviews without performing legitimate purchases. From that moment onward, these accounts are already operating under high-risk status inside Amazon’s monitoring systems.

6. Why Virtual Assistants Post Reviews Extremely Fast

Virtual Assistants know very well that these accounts will eventually be detected and banned.

For this reason, their strategy is simple: maximize the amount of money they can earn before the account disappears.

The same Amazon account is often used for multiple clients at the same time, allowing the VA to publish reviews across many different books. It is therefore common for a single account to post 10, 15, or even 20 reviews in a single week.

From the client’s perspective, everything initially appears to work normally. The review is posted, the link becomes visible, and inside review platforms the action is verified, allowing the user to earn coins or credits.

The real problem appears later.

7. Why Review Deletions Happen in Large Waves

At this point, Amazon begins to see a very clear pattern.

Its systems detect large networks of accounts operating in almost identical ways. These accounts often share several common signals, including similar IP locations, the same type of payment issuer, and identical behavioral patterns when posting reviews.

From Amazon’s perspective, this creates a highly visible network of accounts that appear to be coordinated and operating with the same underlying structure.

When these patterns become clear enough, Amazon does not remove the accounts one by one. Instead, the enforcement actions tend to happen in large waves.

Based on repeated observations over recent months, these waves usually occur roughly every two to four weeks.

This is the reason why many publishers have noticed a strange phenomenon. On seemingly random days, dozens of reviews suddenly disappear from their books, sometimes across multiple titles at the same time.

What is actually happening is that Amazon has identified and banned a large cluster of these accounts in a single enforcement action. When those accounts are removed, every review posted by them disappears simultaneously.

The result is what many publishers have experienced repeatedly in recent months: thousands of reviews being deleted across Amazon on the same day.

8. Why Fraud-Linked Reviewer Accounts Are Far More Dangerous for Publishers

It is important to understand that Amazon does not treat all reviewer violations in the same way.

When a real Amazon user, operating their own legitimate account, simply posts too many reviews in a short period of time, Amazon usually applies relatively limited enforcement actions. In most cases, Amazon will remove the existing reviews and disable the ability of that account to post new reviews in the future.

In these situations, the consequences for publishers who received those reviews are usually minimal. The reviews simply disappear, and the issue generally ends there.

The situation becomes completely different when the reviews come from accounts linked to fraudulent activity.

When Amazon detects that a significant percentage of the reviews received by a publisher’s books originate from accounts that are not only posting fake or coordinated reviews, but are also connected to banking fraud or compromised payment methods, the response becomes much more serious.

At that point, Amazon’s approach shifts from simple moderation to active investigation.

This can lead to actions such as:

• blocking the affected books on Amazon
• suspending or terminating the publisher’s KDP account
• launching a deeper investigation into the origin of those reviews

During this process, Amazon may contact the publisher and request additional information, often asking for documentation or explanations about where those reviews were obtained.

In other words, Amazon assumes that the publisher may have purchased reviews through external services that violate their guidelines, and the investigation focuses on identifying the source of that activity.

This is why reviews generated by networks of fraudulent accounts represent a far greater risk than reviews posted by legitimate users who simply exceeded normal reviewing limits.

9. Why Trust in Review Platforms Has Collapsed

The recent wave of mass review deletions, blocked books, and terminated KDP accounts has inevitably damaged the trust that many publishers once had in review platforms.

And in many ways, their frustration is understandable. However, the real cause of the problem is often misunderstood.

The issue was not simply the existence of review platforms themselves. The real problem has been the inability of many platforms to properly moderate fake reviewers, combined with a lack of clear education about the real risks of using Virtual Assistants.

At BookVillage, for example, the platform includes tools such as the Fake Reviewer Detection System, designed to identify and block suspicious reviewer accounts before they can interact with other members. But technology alone is not enough. A sustainable publishing ecosystem also requires serious and informed users who are willing to avoid shortcuts.

When a Virtual Assistant offers to post reviews for $3 or $4, you should ask yourself a simple question: how is that even possible?

The reality is that these reviews often come from accounts connected not only to fake reviewing activity, but also to banking fraud networks.

From Amazon’s perspective, this looks like thousands of publishers buying fake reviews from the same broker network.

Highly Related Articles

In this article, we mentioned several mechanisms and risk factors that are worth exploring in more detail.

Below you will find a list of highly related articles that expand on what you have just read and help you understand how these issues arise and how to avoid them in practice:

👉 How to Post Reviews Safely Using Your Amazon Reviewer Account

👉 Why Amazon Removes Reviews and Which Behaviors Trigger Deletions

👉 Verified Paid Reviews vs. Unverified Reviews – Everything You Need to Know

👉 Why Verified Free Promo Reviews Are Currently High-Risk

Conclusion

In the next article, which will likely serve as Part 2 of this analysis, we will examine a real case study of a KDP account suspended for review manipulation.

We will analyze the exact information Amazon requests during the appeal process and explain why several details in those communications confirm what we have discussed in this article.

We will also explain what the correct and sustainable way is to delegate reviewing activity to assistants, without violating Amazon’s guidelines or putting your KDP account at risk.

We encourage you to share this article within the communities you are part of, so these dynamics can be discussed openly and clearly.

If you want to test a review ecosystem designed with advanced safety systems, controlled interactions, and long-term Amazon compliance in mind, you can do so without risk.

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— The BookVillage Team