The significant volume of financial transactions in blockchain-based eCommerce platforms is attracting criminals all over the world. Scams are becoming more common, but unfortunately, no one’s talking about it enough. These scams’ main result could be stealing your profits, upsetting your customers, which is not great for your reputation on the web, affecting your views, and costing you significant time. All of this can happen to anyone, so it would be great to educate about this subject. To protect yourself from potential predators, you must understand what a scam looks like in the first place, and here’s our list of usual eCommerce scams:
1. Account Takeover
An account takeover is maybe the most usual scam on the web. The perpetrators are tricking your customers, mainly via email. They make sure to persuade customers to give their passwords and account names away. Using that information, they quickly login into a customer’s account, change the password and delivery address and then make purchases for themselves. If you don’t look at your bank statements, this scam can go unnoticed for some time.
2. Identity theft
This is a really serious and punishable crime which is also called cybercriminal. These people are specially trained, and they know how exactly to hack into a database to steal someone’s personal information, including addresses, names, and of course, credit card details. All of the data is later sold to another scammer who opens new accounts to pay for products.
3. Affiliate Fraud
This type of fraud refers to scammers manipulating affiliate links to get a more significant payoff. You should know that an affiliate gets paid for every visitor they send a site. Well, the scammer can increase that number. That way, it may look like they sent more customers than they actually did so that they can get more money. It can be done in different ways. Some of them involve hacking or an easier option with a fake profile. Scammers must have extraordinary computer skills so they can avoid detection.
4. Recognizing a Scam
The first thing you can notice if you receive some suspicious email is poor English. Don’t look at the false western name if it’s evident that English is their second language. If that person you communicate with refuses to give the phone number and wants to discuss over email, it’s more than obvious that something is wrong here.
How to Protect Yourself From E-commerce Scams?
There are some security measurements you can try. First of all, ensure that your systems are PCI(Payment Card Industry) compliant. It has exceptional guidance on the storage and security of your information. Also, make sure to put some solid passwords and create a two-step verification. Observe your customer’s behavior, because they are almost predictable. They follow some buying patterns, order the same types of products, spend a similar amount, and of course, use the same delivery address. With fraud detection tools, there are high chances that you’ll notice some suspicious activities on time.
