Internet business scams and
merchant fraud online are big problems around the world. Many companies
worldwide have closed down and terminated a significant percentage of their
manpower resources because of cyber scams. These Web crimes are among the utmost
concerns of many start-up businesses, especially those that produce digital
goods like software products. A lot of individual merchants with ecommerce
stores and freelancers who sell virtual services also worry about the effects
that these online scams can do to their ventures. However, online buyers around
the world are affected by Web crimes as much as businesses.
What is Merchant Fraud
Online?
Simply put - Merchant fraud
online is where Web shoppers are victimized by criminal syndicates that operate
fake ecommerce stores. Many of these ecommerce platforms are designed to entice
users to purchase the products in their inventory. To grab the attention of
their target victims, the non-existent items in these fake ecommerce stores are
among the most popular products worldwide.
To make their fake offers
irresistible to Web shoppers, they display ridiculously low prices beside
captivating photos of these non-existent products in their fake Web stores.
They then promote these ecommerce platforms and phoney offers all over the
Internet, in an effort to lure unsuspecting buyers to this merchant fraud online.
How Are Fake Ecommerce
Stores & Offers Promoted?
Criminal syndicates around
the world that operate these fake Web stores mainly use phishing scams and malware
to advertise their rogue offers. These are some of the most widely used tactics
for committing fraud online.
Phishing in this case is
where users are lead to fake ecommerce sites that look exactly like the user's
favorite online shopping platform. Unsuspecting users, captivated by popular
products and crazy price tags, unknowingly enter their credit card details and
financial account credentials into these fake sites. These details are then
logged and stolen by these criminal syndicates, which are then used for their
other fraud online activities.
Most scammers are however
more direct in their approach when luring unsuspecting users to online fraud.
Their main objective is to simply steal money from their victims. With this,
they post irresistible discount offers in their fake Web stores. Of course,
users can only get these discount offers if they pay through cash remittance
platforms and money ordering portals. Victims who do this won't be able to
recover their money. After all, cash transactions are as good as cash, even on
the Web!
Malware is on the other hand
distributed to lure victims into merchant fraud. These are mainly spyware
programs that track a user's Internet activities in a compromised device. These
spyware applications are also injected with adware functionality.
Adware is primarily used for
merchant fraud online to entice users into going to these fake ecommerce
platforms. These adware components initiate pop-up messages that can be quite
difficult to close. These messages are also laced with ridiculously cheap deals
for popular products.
Some criminal syndicates
implement social marketing tactics to lure unsuspecting users to merchant fraud
online. These pop-up messages contain support numbers that users can call for a
quicker and easier means to get the fake offers in these rogue ecommerce
platforms.
