For in-house lawyers, this is an emerging risk area tied closely to reputational and compliance pressures.

Picture this: your business is launching a new product. The marketing team proudly shows you a page full of glowing five-star reviews. Great news, right? Until someone points out that a few of those reviews might not be genuine. Suddenly, what looked like a PR win starts to look like a compliance headache.

Fake reviews aren’t just an irritation anymore - they are now squarely in the legal spotlight. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC Act), the CMA has introduced new rules that make fake reviews and misleading review practices illegal. The guidance, published in April 2025, is a must-read for any business that displays or relies on reviews. You can find it here.

Here’s what you need to know.

What’s changed?

From April 2025, a new "banned practice" has been introduced. This makes it automatically unfair (and therefore unlawful) for businesses to:

• Submit or commission fake reviews.
• Publish reviews (or review data like star ratings) in a misleading way.
• Fail to take reasonable steps to prevent fake or concealed incentivised reviews from appearing on their platforms.

In short: if your business uses reviews, you’re responsible for making sure they’re fair, transparent and genuine.

What counts as a fake or concealed review?

• Fake reviews – reviews that pretend to be genuine but are not based on a real experience. They can be positive or negative.
• Concealed incentivised reviews – reviews written in exchange for payment, freebies, discounts or other perks, where the incentive isn’t clearly disclosed.

Even if a review reflects a genuine experience, if you hide the fact that it was paid for, you could still be in breach.

What about review platforms?

If your company hosts or displays reviews (even if they’re collected by someone else), you must take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent fake or misleading reviews from appearing. The CMA expects you to:

• Publish clear policies about how you handle reviews.
• Assess risks – for example, spotting patterns like sudden spikes in five-star reviews.
• Take proactive steps to detect, investigate and remove suspicious reviews.
• Sanction those who post or benefit from fake reviews.

Simply claiming “we didn’t know” won’t be enough.

Common traps to avoid

The CMA guidance includes examples of practices that will get you into trouble:

• Cherry-picking – only showing positive reviews while hiding genuine negative ones.
• Catalogue abuse – using reviews for one product to boost another, different product.
• Outdated reviews – continuing to display old reviews that don’t reflect significant changes to a product or service.
• Buying reviews – paying individuals or bots to create fake reviews.

Why this matters for in-house legal teams

For in-house counsel, these rules cut across several risk areas:

• Reputation – fake reviews damage customer trust.
• Compliance – breaches of the DMCC Act can lead to CMA enforcement.
• Commercial contracts – supplier agreements may need updating to include obligations around review practices.

It’s another example of legal risk popping up in unexpected corners of the business - particularly marketing and e-commerce.

Practical steps for GCs and Heads of Legal

1. Review policies – make sure your business has a clear, accessible policy on reviews.
2. Work with marketing – ensure campaigns involving reviews comply with the guidance.
3. Audit platforms – check whether your systems (or third-party providers) have processes for detecting and removing fake reviews.
4. Update contracts – build obligations and indemnities around review compliance into contracts with agencies and suppliers.
5. Train your teams – educate commercial teams about what counts as a fake or concealed incentivised review.

The takeaway

Reviews are no longer just a marketing issue. Under the new regime, they are a compliance risk that sits firmly on the legal radar. As the CMA guidance makes clear, businesses can’t afford to look the other way.

If you haven’t already, now’s the time to read the CMA’s full guidance on fake reviews and check how your processes stack up.