Take note, folks. Those online reviews we have all come to trust may not be as unbiased as previously thought. A representative from Belkin, which makes USB devices, has been caught red-handed soliciting positive reviews on Amazon in return for money.

The offer was found on Amazon’s own Mechanical Turk, an online classifieds of sorts where users earn money through completing small tasks unable to be performed by a computer, such as sorting photos or writing small descriptions.

Just how much was Belkin offering? Just 65 cents. In return, the user was expected to write a 25-50 word review for a particular Belkin product on Amazon. A 100% positive rating was required, and writers were also instructed to write as if they owned the product and mark all negative reviews as “not helpful.” Click here to see a screenshot of the offer.

Honestly, this sort of manipulation isn’t surprising. I’ve never totally trusted online reviews because I always thought they open to this kind of shenanigans. The difference is in the case of Belkin, they were dumb enough to post an open offer on a public website. Maybe they should have gone to back alleys to find people for the job, or simply written the reviews themselves.

This kind of behavior among companies isn’t that uncommon. In addition to forging video card performance stats, the GPU-maker has also been caught paying members of prominent web forums to recommend their products. Even China hires web users to promote and defend their agenda. The nature of the web today makes it easy to exploit, and anyone who doesn’t take what they read online with a grain of salt needs a reality check.

Via [The Daily Background]