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Comment by 5440 | Hacker News Reader

I received one of these packages from singapore yesterday. There is no website on the packaging or inside of the envelope. Therefore, I don't understand the amazon review thing. Its just a package of seeds in a manila envelope.

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Yes but there's a shipping number associated with it in China, and there is a confirmation that a thing was shipped to the US address. That's what they are after here, and nothing more.

Why put anything in it?

The news articles I read on this speculated the seeds may be invasive species, implying it's a sort of subversive attack in addition to the review scam.

Sellers "sell" an item with a random person's address somewhere in the world. This allows them to make reviews without it being suspect that 100's of reviews have come from purchases shipped to the same address. In the past it seemed that Amazon cared more about items having a high rating than fixing these issues, but with the recent negative press it may have become positive EV for Amazon to start enforcing at least legitimacy around reviews.

It would seem that Amazon could notice that a particular item got a lot of reviews from addresses it knows have only ordered from more establishe accounts in the past.

They don’t need you to do anything. The person who sent it to you is now a “verified purchaser”, which makes the review they leave more reputable.

I am not an SME; looking at the photo on BBC these look like lemon stones (seeds). Could you identify them? Did you ask anyone/did anyone gave you a hint on what could they be for/from?

Did you plant the seeds? I'm curious what would grow.

It may not be a great idea to pant mystery seeds from overseas. You could end up with something invasive that’s hard to get rid of.

I bought a plant like that on Amazon (cat’s claw creeper) and luckily did more research before planting it. It’s a problem in the southern US, and I don’t want to be responsible for introducing it to California.

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