Black Friday Fraud?

Is Black Friday Becoming A Playground for Fraudsters?

One of the largest worldwide events in eCommerce is undoubtedly “Black Friday”. Counterfeit goods are a huge problem for brands when it comes to the four day period between 24th and 27th November. In 2016, £5.8billion was spent during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday period. 

With it not being unusual for retailers to offer up to 50% off of products, the period really does pull in customers. But there is a much darker side to the pre-Christmas shopping event. While popular belief used to be that people are deliberately buying fake products because they are cheaper, research has shown that up to 23% of people are being duped when they are buying online (source: https://marcommnews.com/keep-black-friday-shopping-free-of-fake-goods/). 

With new technologies like voice commerce and shopping through social media, there are even more avenues for fraudsters to explore when it comes to exploiting customers. Unfortunately for legitimate sellers, the scope is there for fraudsters to very easily set up shops around the Black Friday period. Due to an increase in the volume of eCommerce in general around this time, many customers can be scammed and do not realize until they receive a faulty or counterfeit product. This is a widespread issue that occurs on nearly all online marketplaces.

Check the domain

One of the main things to check for when shopping in the Black Friday sale is who has registered the domain you are routed through to when you wish to make a purchase. Fake ads on social media can look incredibly realistic and so can the websites that accompany them.

Check the website’s security

It can make anyone nervous entering sensitive payment details into a website, so check the SSL certificate of the website before you do so. If the website is secure, it will display a padlock symbol in green to signify it has valid HTTPS. The difference between standard HTTP and HTTPS is that the ‘S’ stands for secure. This means that all of the information that is passed back and forth between you and the website is secure, like your credit card details. You should never enter your details into a website that does not display the HTTPS logo.

Do some research about the website, their contact details and their policies 

It’s actually really easy to identify the legitimacy of the website the ad you see has taken you through to. Websites like https://www.scamadviser.com will help you to identify whether the website is fraudulent or not. You can also look at things like contact details. You might want to try getting through to the helpline or email address to see if this is legitimate. If the website is too small to have been evaluated on a site like this, then you might consider performing a Google search to see what other people are saying about it.

What can I do if Black Friday Sellers use my Brand?

If a seller that is not authorized to use your brand name is creating ads based around the Black Friday period, we can help you. Black Friday fraudsters can have a devastating effect on your revenue. We can monitor all activity online and complete a test purchase in more than 30 countries. Our domain monitoring service will check to see if any domain activity has been registered using your name and we can also help you with takedown.

This article was initially published by Scamadviser partner Globaleyez GmbH. The original report you can find here.