Marketplace®

Daily business news and economic stories

Is it possible to sink online scammers?

How can you spot a fraudulent e-commerce website? And what can you do to take it down? A minor scam sent a BBC reporter on a quest.

Download
Is it possible to sink online scammers?
FreshSplash/Getty Images

This story was produced by our colleagues at the BBC.

It all started with good intentions. My 12-year-old son decided to buy his brothers some posters from a website he'd seen advertised on TikTok, but it didn't work out well.

"I went on the website, and it gives really trustworthy reviews. It never arrived. I mean, it arrived as a digital download but they pretty much scammed us,” he said.

A slick site suggested real, physical posters at great prices but all that arrived was an email with a few links — supposedly to digital downloads. It turns out this was mentioned in the small print. We looked on the review site Trustpilot. There were more than 70 reviews, all negative. Here are a few:

"Complete scam! The site's designed and worded to mislead you into believing you're going to receive a physical product."

 "They're not physical posters. They're downloads. And if you made the same mistake as me, I'm sorry, there's just no way you're getting your money back."

An email to the business went unanswered. We had only lost $30, but I called my bank and sent a report to U.K. fraud body Action Fraud. I then wondered if I could get the site taken down.

An organization called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, manages the global domain name system and has a tool called Lookup, where you can find out some information about domains.

The domain name was registered to Tucows, a big domain registrar based in Toronto. It sells and manages domain names and is actually one of the biggest in the world. They handle complaints through a so-called 'abuse' system. I fired off an email and also approached their media team for an interview.

Reg Levy, associate general council, explained how they deal with abuse reports.

"We work closely with law enforcement, with abuse reporters and with our partners in the industry to look at the domain and evaluate whether or not there's something going on and identify who is best situated to take action,” she said. "Often, it is the hosting company because the domain name registrar cannot remove content from a domain name. All we can do is remove the domain from the internet.”

She added: "If we sever that connection between the site and the domain, the website still exists; it's just not related to the domain. So the content is still on the internet and can be easily linked to a new domain, and that's why we typically say the hosting company is best situated to remove the content."

In this case, the site was hosted by Shopify, the online payments giant also headquartered in Canada. It was also handling payments for the poster site. I fired off a complaint email and received this reply:

"To discuss this issue further please contact the store directly. Please note there will be no follow-up from Shopify on your report. Store owners are responsible for their policies and business practices and Shopify cannot resolve any issues between you and the store owner."

I wanted to ask Shopify if it was doing enough here, but there was no response to several messages sent to its media team. This felt like a dead-end. However, there is a market for this — cyber security firms sell website "take down" services, though it's mainly focused on the protection of commercial interests.

As a consumer, I’ve seen firsthand that it’s very hard to get smaller scam sites shut down. Some suggest the best strategy for staying safe online is vigilance.

"If a price seems too good to be true, it probably is. Don't feel pressured into making any purchases and always do your research,” said Kat Cereda, with the U.K. consumer magazine, Which? “Secondly, you need to check reviews for signs of fake reviews. For example, if you see a large number of five-star reviews with glowing language, this could be a red flag.”

All of this applies to social media platforms too, where half of all shopping scams take place, according to the U.K.'s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.

As for my son's case, the bank refunded the money, but Action Fraud said there were no lines of inquiry for the police to pursue. The site is still up and people are still complaining on Trustpilot.

Related Topics

Latest Episodes

View All Shows
  • Million Bazillion
    in 8 hours
    26:59
  • Marketplace Tech
    33 minutes ago
    6:49
  • Marketplace
    12 hours ago
    26:04
  • Make Me Smart
    15 hours ago
    11:38
  • Marketplace Morning Report
    20 hours ago
    7:18
  • This Is Uncomfortable
    a month ago
    2:27
  • Financially Inclined
    2 months ago
    12:30
  • How We Survive
    2 months ago
    22:09
  • The Uncertain Hour
    4 months ago
    22:50
  • Corner Office from Marketplace
    5 years ago
    20:58