#### How Trustpilot works

# We're open to all.

## How do reviews get on Trustpilot?

Reviews on Trustpilot are written by consumers from across the globe. Anyone who has had a recent buying or service experience can write a review, for free, as long as they have a Trustpilot user account, follow our Guidelines for Reviewers, and don’t have a conflict of interest with the business they’re reviewing. A user account must be connected to an email address so we can get in touch for account- and service- related issues.

All reviews about a business are shown on their profile page. This is where consumers can read and write reviews, and find other relevant information about the business, such as the overall TrustScore and star rating.

A Trustpilot review can start in two ways:

## Being open is in our DNA

Trustpilot was created in 2007 as an independent, open platform that sits between businesses and consumers, and empowers both by enabling collaboration.

We allow anyone to post a review, which prevents businesses from pre-screening or moderating what consumers actually read. This is one of the key ways we’re different from ‘closed’ or pay-to-access platforms where companies collect reviews as marketing collateral and can publish the reviews they like and ‘unpublish’ those they don’t (either after the fact or by pre-screening).

This is never the case on Trustpilot. We welcome all reviews from consumers who've had a genuine experience.

## Consumers own their reviews

We consider reviews to be user-generated content owned by their author, and they are the only one who can edit or permanently delete their reviews. This can be done through their user account.

Unless a user permanently deletes their individual reviews, we keep reviews for as long as the user has a Trustpilot account. When a user deletes their account, all of their reviews are also permanently deleted. This is outlined in the 'How long do we store your personal data?' section of our Privacy Policy.

## Fighting fake reviews

Every review on Trustpilot is screened by our bespoke automated fraud detection software that identifies and removes fakes. It looks at multiple data points, such as IP addresses, user identifiers, device characteristics, location data and timestamps, to determine if it exhibits patterns of suspicious behavior.

Whenever our software detects clearly fraudulent reviews, the review is moved offline and we send an email to notify the reviewer (we won’t send an email if the review is clearly advertising or promotional content). This provides reviewers with an opportunity to correct any false positives. However, if we have overwhelming evidence that the review is fake, we won’t reinstate it.

See more about how we safeguard our platform.

## Flagging reviews

Being open to all also means giving both businesses and consumers the opportunity to flag a review if it contravenes our guidelines. Our Content Integrity Team checks each flagged review, and if they find that it breaks the rules, they take action.

Flagged reviews stay online while they are being investigated, except for content flagged as “harmful or illegal”, which must be hidden in order to protect the public and comply with regulation.

Our rules are crystal clear that only flagging negative reviews is against our guidelines. Businesses that misuse the flagging function damage the trustworthiness of our platform. We take this very seriously. Learn more about how we address misuse of the flagging function.

## A neutral space for dialogue and collaboration

"We're open to all. We believe this is the best way to help consumers make informed decisions when buying products and services."

Ben Martin Director of Privacy

#### Contact us

## Want to know more?

Get in touch to find out more about what we do to build trust and promote transparency in online reviews. For editorial and press enquiries, see Trustpilot’s Press site.