How e-commerce and fraud websites came to be at the same
time, one enabling the other’s existence.
The internet was created in the United States being
government use its sole purpose at the time. When it became open to the public
in the late 1980s Internet Service Providers made it possible for every
household to ‘go online’. By 1994 e-commerce, a term believed to have been
coined by IBM as a melding of Internet and traditional transactions, came to
life. And with it the other side of the coin came to be as well: online fraud
and fraud websites.
Having all this money starting to be moved around in a non-tangible
way caught the attention of crooks, both big and small. The internet and
e-commerce offered a new, efficient way of doing things and the dark side of it
was not taken into account in its creation so the first crooks had an easy job
to do; everything was there for their taking as no security measures had been
set in place. From identity theft, to credit card fraud, to fraud websites;
everything was a chance to make money the easy way.
This had an obvious impact in this new developing world. How
were people supposed to trust this new, intangible, hard to explain new web
world when even on its early stages its dangers were taking over?
And this is exactly how fraud damaged and continues to damage
the web. Scammers, honest users and companies had been and still are trying to
stay one step ahead of the other. New and more sophisticated security measures
come along with new and more sophisticated frauds. And this is damaging to the big companies as
well as the small entrepreneurs that want to benefit from the web’s reach and
ease of use. If consumers have a hard time trusting the big companies, how can
they trust the small, yet unknown companies that are trying to get out there
and be noticed? And it swings both ways. By thinking that websites might be fraud
websites, consumers miss out on useful and honest services or products.
Users might also become passive enablers of fraud, especially
when it comes to fraud websites. There are thousands of fraudulent gaming sites.
The games work, most of them at least, and there seems to be nothing wrong with
it aside from the fact that it looks like a basic, cheap website; it looks
legit. However, these sites are most likely committing advertising fraud. The
banners and pop-ups are meant to be seen once per unique users, but they are
being constantly refreshed and clicked by Adbots, adding up to millions of
dollars each year in fraudulent advertising activity.
