How is fraud done in eCommerce?

Impersonating another person, selling a product that never existed and creating purchases of false products or services are some of the ways in which fraud is carried out within eCommerce. Although there are many more forms of fraud, we will mention the most common ones used by fraudsters.

Phishing attacks

If you have ever received an email or text message from a company asking you to confirm data or personal information through a link. Careful! You may be about to be a victim of fraud.

This impersonation method is one of the attackers' favorites since many people still fall into these practices because they do not know how to avoid it. Here are some tips for you!

1. Never, but really NEVER, will a company contact you to request personal information by email. Whether account numbers, bank card, CVC code among others. If they ask you to call a phone number, it is best not to click on any link and delete it.
2. In the case of email, always check the sender, there are emails that end with strange nomenclatures. They are fake! In some emails, the fraudster even makes a visible copy of all the emails where he sent this information. Normally, all institutional emails are sent by an automated system and generally begin with “no reply”.
3. If you receive such an email or text message, you can go to the company's official website and check if the information is correct. If you have doubts, it doesn't hurt to check!

Identity fraud

Impersonation is considered the next step of phishing, because once they have taken over your information, they begin to take advantage of it by trying to impersonate you with purchases on different sites.

Banks, seeing irregular purchases constantly, may contact you to confirm these transactions. However, this is not enough against the modus operandi of fraudsters.

Although better filters have been generated to identify fraud such as the device used, the browser and the IP address, scammers are beginning to find better ways to hide. These two tips can help you!

1. Familiarize yourself with irregularities and review any patterns you may find during the user's session. For example, the Safari browser uses a single language per session. If multiple languages ​​are detected in a purchase where the user claims to use a Safari browser, it would be a strong indicator of attempted counterfeiting.
2. Use a service that helps you with the validation work since they are specialists in all these confirmations of whether a payment is valid or not. You will have to pay a little more for this service but you will avoid a lot of headaches from fraudulent orders.

If you don't know what types of services are the most recommended, at doos studio we will soon be uploading a blog about anti-fraud processors.

Although we could mention many more forms of fraud within eCommerce, these two are the most used today. It is important to emphasize that this is one of the most important issues when buying and also when selling online, working precisely on this issue will be a pillar to show an efficient and secure site.

Thanks for reading us!