Fake shops during the Christmas season - Attention cheaters!
The holiday season is a real blessing for online commerce - sales of most online retailers are rising by leaps and bounds. The unexpected money blessing unfortunately also attracts fraudsters. They increasingly create fake online shops in which goods are offered but never delivered. Customers should take a close look at online shops with particularly tempting offers.
Christmas time is cheating time - beware of tempting offers!
During the Christmas season, fraudsters try to cheat customers out of their Christmas bonus. For this purpose, online shops are created that contain apparently cheap offers. Thanks to open source software, the creation of online shops is as simple as it is professional. Product texts and pictures can be copied in minutes - at first glance the fake shops look very trustworthy. Price-sensitive consumers like to be dazzled by the alleged price crunchers and transfer their hard-earned money to foreign accounts without hesitation. Waiting for the ordered goods becomes a torture - in many cases, however, even on Christmas Eve, the goods will still not be under the Christmas tree.
Recognize and avoid fake shops
Many fake shops cannot be distinguished from serious online traders purely visually. The stolen product texts and pictures look just as realistic as the rest of the Shop - depending on how much attention to detail was invested. Possible indications of a fake shop are non-functioning hotlines and English phrases. Clear clues are poor texts that have obviously been copied from a translation program. Probably the most important indication of a fake shop is an unrealistic price. Goods that are offered many times cheaper than those of comparable providers are too good to be true. Another clue can be a faulty imprint. Fake shops do not offer many payment methods. Logically, these do not have to be revisable: Therefore, fake shop operators prefer to resort to credit cards.
disguise of identity
Operators of fake shops disguise their identity in order to avoid the access of law enforcement agencies. The registration services are mostly located in other European countries, the hoster in the USA. Reporting foreign fake shops is futile in most situations. The case must be painstakingly explained in English to the agents abroad. Even if this succeeds, the authorities there usually lack knowledge of the legal situation in Germany. The best protection against fake shops is comprehensive prevention. Use a search engine to check whether the online shop has already been identified as a fake shop by other users. Test seals, for example from TrustedShops, provide information about the seriousness of online shops. Payment service providers such as PayPal offer comprehensive buyer protection so that you get your money back in the event of fraud. Operators of online shops should protect them comprehensively. Many fraudsters host not only online shops, but try to hack reputable providers - the product range is then offered at a ridiculous price and the deposited money is diverted to foreign accounts. The owner of the online shop suffers the damage: He must reverse all purchases and deal with his disgruntled customer base. Providers should pay more attention to SSL encryption and correct information in the Whois details of the domain name - customers will check this more and more often to verify the trustworthiness and authenticity of online shops.
