New online scams continue to plague the world this 2017. From
confidence schemes and fake offers that victimize regular Web shoppers and
Internet users worldwide to credit card fraud and identity theft where
ecommerce stores lose a lot of money, crime syndicates and solo scammers devise
new methods to circumvent advanced Web security protocols and the latest
Internet privacy procedures. They do this by monitoring user activity and by
looking for vulnerabilities in ecommerce stores that they can exploit and in
online platforms that their target victims frequent. These are just a few of
the main reasons why you need to defend yourself against these Web crimes.
What Are the Newest Forms of Online
Scams Against Ecommerce Stores?
1. Affiliate fraud has become a widespread problem
across many ecommerce merchants around the world. This is where scammers pose
as legitimate businesses and solo digital marketers, tricking ecommerce
businesses into believing that they want to promote their products and services
to legitimately earn commissions from each sale. In these online scams, the
fraudster uses stolen credit cards and hacked bank accounts to purchase the
ecommerce merchant's products and services through the thief's affiliate links.
Crooks that operate similar online scams often look for ecommerce stores with quick commission payout schedules. This allows them to
run away with the money long before legitimate credit card owners and bank
account holders realize that their financial accounts have been compromised. Once
these users file chargebacks and unauthorized payment claims, the ecommerce
merchant ends up owing a lot of money to their banks and merchant account
providers. They also lose their products, and some end up with terminated
online payment gateway accounts because of excessive chargebacks.
2. Card not present fraud and identity theft are among
the biggest problems of many ecommerce merchants worldwide. In 2014, more than
$8 billion losses were reported throughout the USA due to similar types of
online scams. Web security firms and financial analysts claim that this would
most likely balloon to over $19 billion by the end of 2018. A lot of ecommerce
merchants suffer a great deal because of these Web crimes. Some of them
entirely lose the ability to accept online payments because of excessive
chargebacks and unauthorized payment claims. These are filed against them by
legitimate card owners and bank account holders whose financial accounts are
hacked and stolen from them by online crooks.
3. Phishing attacks are also known to negatively impact
the bottom-line of many ecommerce stores and businesses with online payment
gateways. Their reputation is damaged because once victims realize that they've
just fallen for similar online scams - They blame the businesses and spread the
word all over the Internet and their social networks about their experience.
That's because in a usual phishing attack, websites and
ecommerce stores of legitimate businesses are cloned by thieves, while their
email addresses and social media accounts are spoofed. This is to trick their
target victims into believing that the messages they send out are from these
legitimate businesses. Once they fool their intended victims, they lure them
deeper into their online scams.
To avoid similar online scams, you as an ecommerce store
owner should enable all the anti-fraud protection technologies that are
provided by your bank, merchant account provider or payment gateway platform.
These include 3D Secure, which is provided by credit card companies, and AVS
(Address Verification System) among others. You should also fortify your manual
customer identity verification procedures.
You should also sign up at BigScammers.com to learn about the
newest forms of Web crimes today that are targeted at ecommerce merchants like
you. By doing this, you'll receive instant notifications and real time alerts
from this online community in your email, allowing you to prepare and defend
yourself against the latest online scams at the moment.
