How to spot lies online

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial advice, gathered from around the web:

How to spot online lies

Fake reviews are a problem across Amazon, said Catey Hill at Moneyish. How do you spot them? There are a few obvious ways: Spelling and grammar, for instance, are often weak in reviews that are "outsourced to international content farms." But there are surprising giveaways, too. A Cornell study found that reviews that frequently used "I" or "me," perhaps hoping to sound credible, were actually "more likely to be fake." In the same study, reviews that spent time on "scene setting" instead of getting directly to the product often turned out to be suspect. The words "vacation" or "business trip" were often signs of a fake. As was the phrase "my husband."

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An upside to the downside

People who graduate into the job market during recessions end up both poorer and happier, said Emily Bianchi at the Harvard Business Review. In a study of 1,638 college graduates, those who finished school in times of economic hardship were happier with their jobs and careers than people who graduated in better economic times. It may be that these graduates felt lucky they got a job at all; only 56 percent of graduates from 2010, the height of the Great Recession, found work within nine months. But the increased life satisfaction persisted for years, even though recession-era graduates paid a clear income penalty. One theory why: "Narcissism seems to be tempered by adversity and setbacks," and a tough entry creates workers who are more resilient and "less self-absorbed" later in life.

Is this CNBC star a vulture?

Getting a famous TV host to invest in your firm is an entrepreneur's dream, said Will Yakowicz at Inc. — but for some owners it has turned into a nightmare. The pitch for CNBC's The Profit is that the star, multi-millionaire investor Marcus Lemonis, will bring his expertise to small businesses, helping them grow in exchange for a share in the company. But often he effectively takes over the company and "makes the founder fight his or her way back to control." Or worse. Lemonis liked one business that appeared on the show, the Pittsburgh-area restaurant chain My Big Fat Greek Gyro, so much that he started his own similar chain. Some business owners wind up in debt to the star. "Eventually," alleges one entrepreneur, "Lemonis says, 'You owe me so much money and if you don't give me control of the entire company, I'll go after you.'"