Britain's Black Friday Sales Fight Online Fraud

Delortae Agency 5 step guide. As Britain's Black Friday Sales set to boost online shopping which online scammers will be taking advantage of to defraud consumers out of their hard-earned cash and what steps we can take to protect ourselves and our accounts from fraudulent activity.

£10 million pounds was spent last year, 2015 with £12,000 online scam victims so what can we do?

1. E-mails. One of the most successful ways online scammers are using is our e-mail accounts. E-mail hacking of our email and banking accounts are being systematically attacked by fraudsters. Look at the address of the e-mail sender. It may look as if it's coming from a legitimate company but a close look at the sender will alert you to the sender and DO NOT click on any links or download any zipped files that proport to be an invoice, delivery or dispatch notices. These will contain viruses and malware that will be installed on your device and wait silently to register your 'key strokes'.
2. Passwords. Are a favoured way to get access to your money. It is fast and allows the thieves to spend large amounts of your money in a short space of time. Remember your bank will never email or text you to confirm your banking and login information. If you do receive this type of correspondence, report it to your financial institution immediately.
3. Fake Websites. There will be a flurry of activity on the set up of fake websites selling high ticket items. You will be encouraged to purchase these 'bargains' and on checkout be encouraged to enter your payment details along with your address for delivery. With this information, they will have the information they need to make purchases which are what they want. Purchase from legitimate websites and only make purchases from sites you know and trust and display SSL encryption on the payment page, the often green padlock or other verification in the URL Adress bar proves this site has been verified for payment. If it does not display 'https' before the address, avoid!
4. Transaction Page. Look for the verification and safe seal certificates displayed and if possible pay with a third party account, such as PayPal that will offer some protection about items that are not as described or don't arrive at all. They want your payment information and your money!
5. Pickpockets. If you going to brave the high street in search of that bargain, keep your wits about you. They will be looking for somebody vulnerable, momentarily distracted to relieve you of your cash or your goods.

Download the Luxury Income Club Online Scam Survival Guide for more help, tips and advice.

Remember; if something looks too good to be true, it usually is. Share with us your experiences of possible fraudulent activity and we will ensure it is followed up with the relevant authorities and happy shopping.

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Luxury Group Kering sues Alibaba for helping Counterfeiters

Makers of expensive bags, clothes and watches are fighting fakery in the courts. But the battle seems to be getting tougher

THE grand golden doors of 500 Pearl Street, in Manhattan, have welcomed such glamorous names as Hermès, Tiffany & Co and Kering, a French conglomerate whose treasures include Gucci and Bottega Veneta. The building is not a posh hotel or department store. It is the federal court for the Southern District of New York, a favoured battleground for the decidedly unglamorous war against counterfeit goods. As reported by the business section of the economist (August 2015)

The court is now the venue for Kering’s suit against Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant. Kering alleges that Alibaba helps fakers sell goods on its websites. The French firm is not the only one to be incensed. On July 17th the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) demanded that Alibaba crack down on counterfeits. Alibaba insists it has extensive measures in place to do just that. It is trying to distance itself from counterfeiters, who are also accused by Kering. On August 6th Alibaba plans to argue to the court that it risks being unfairly implicated as a co-conspirator. A bitter trial looks likely.

The fight against copycats has been long and arduous. Kering’s suit is the industry’s most important in a decade—Alibaba has more than 1 billion product listings and aspires to reach consumers around the world. But its sites are hardly the only places shoppers can find copies. Fake sales are proliferating online, with counterfeiters becoming more technologically adept, more difficult to track and harder to pursue in court.

Counterfeit sales are, by definition, difficult to tally. Last year American border officials nabbed copies that, had they been genuine, would have been worth $1.2 billion. Their European Union counterparts seized €768m ($1 billion) of fakes in 2013. But these were surely a fraction of the counterfeits being peddled. Estimates for the total value of fakes sold worldwide each year go as high as $1.8 trillion.

The deluge of fakes includes everything from software and medicine to detergent and car parts. On July 26th, for example, Chinese authorities said police had raided a factory turning out huge quantities of iPhone copies. Nevertheless, watches, bags, clothing, jewellery and perfume make up most of the goods seized at borders (see chart). On July 21st the European Commission reported that lost sales due to fake clothes and accessories amounted to 10% of the industry’s revenue in Europe. This makes luxury firms shudder. They cherish their reputations for quality and exclusivity, explains Antonio Achille of the Boston Consulting Group. Ubiquitous, flimsy copies undermine them.

Economist.com

The problem has grown more complex as the fakery business has moved online. America’s trade representative predicted in April that online sales of pirated goods might exceed those in physical markets, adding glumly: “Enforcement authorities, unfortunately, face difficulties in responding to this trend.” Online, counterfeiters can stay anonymous, reach across borders and constantly launch new websites to evade legal action. Governments have a devilish time tracking fakes sold online and delivered by post, explains Armando Branchini of Altagamma, the trade group for Italian luxury firms. Fakes shipped in bulk, destined to be sold in physical shops, are hard enough for border guards to spot. “But when it’s a matter of millions of parcels, each with a pair of shoes or bag or shirt,” Mr Branchini sighs, “it’s quite impossible to check.”

Since it is so difficult to fight both fake-goods websites and the counterfeiting operations behind them—if you shut one factory, another will crop up nearby—luxury-goods firms are increasingly taking aim at the legitimate firms that facilitate the business of counterfeiters, such as auction websites, internet-domain registries and payment processors. Sometimes brand-owners seek these firms’ co-operation in court. Sometimes they sue them.

This has had mixed success. In 2004 Tiffany claimed that eBay was liable for the counterfeit sales on its site. eBay retorted that it could not prevent every illicit post, though it would work to remove them. Courts agreed. eBay and Google, which has also been the target of lawsuits, have systems to fight dubious sellers and advertisers. Neither, however, is foolproof.

Alibaba and the forty fakers

According to Kering’s lawsuit, Alibaba poses a new challenge. On eBay, a counterfeiter might auction one or two handbags at a time. Kering alleges that one wholesaler on Alibaba required a minimum purchase of 500 fake Gucci watches and claimed it could deliver up to 8m each month. Brand-owners tremble at the spectre of Alibaba’s 8.5m sellers hawking masses of counterfeits both within China and around the world. Kering’s investigators, for example, bought fake Gucci sneakers on Alibaba’s Taobao.com and had them shipped to New York. Kering alleges that Alibaba not only provides a platform for these sales, but encourages them. Kering complains that if you type “replica” in the search bar in Alibaba.com, the site’s algorithm will suggest “wristwatches”.

Alibaba counters that it, too, is a victim of counterfeiters and is working to fight them. The company has more than 2,000 staff devoted to the problem. They pore over dodgy listings flagged up by Alibaba’s algorithms and by brand-owners. In the run-up to its public offering last year, the firm removed 90m listings. Indeed Alibaba has acquired some weighty partners—it has signed agreements with Louis Vuitton, Coach and others to co-operate on fighting counterfeits. But its disputes look likely to heat up. The AAFA wants Alibaba to set up an automated system to take down dubious listings immediately, a demand that is unlikely to be met. The fight with Kering will continue. The two parties have already tried and failed to reach agreement outside court.

Meanwhile sales of counterfeits continue to sprawl across the internet. For example, it is common for Chinese consumers to dodge the high price of luxury goods in their own country by buying them on so-called daigou websites: a shopper might buy a handbag in Europe, then resell it on one of these websites for more than the European retail price but less than the Chinese one. Many products on such sites are genuine. Many are not.

More pervasive are the sites that pose as legitimate sellers of discounted goods. They may have domain names registered in one country, servers in another, payment-processing elsewhere and shipping from yet another place, according to MarkMonitor, which helps companies protect their brands online. Roxanne Elings, a lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine, says one counterfeit outfit may run as many as 14,000 websites.

Firms have had some success in battling these sites, again by focusing their attention on legitimate companies that serve them. In 2010 Ms Elings helped North Face and Polo Ralph Lauren obtain court orders for domain registries to take down networks of rogue sites, and for PayPal to turn over fakers’ assets. Tory Burch, Hermès and Michael Kors won similar cases in 2011 and 2012.

Since then, however, counterfeiters have become more slippery. Ms Elings says that networks of sites are using multiple registries and myriad fake names. Joseph Gioconda, a lawyer who has represented Hermès, Michael Kors and Lululemon, says that catching up with copycats is daunting when their assets are held outside America. Kering and Tiffany had sought to freeze counterfeiters’ accounts at Chinese banks, but last year an American court refused to do so. That will make it harder to obtain foreign records that might expose counterfeit rings.

The role of consumers in all this is complex. Some are looking for the real thing at discount prices, and are deceived. Others are knowingly hunting for fakes. Both types may regret their penny-pinching. The most troubling recent trend is that online counterfeiters have discovered a new source of revenue. Some of their sites have no goods to sell, real or fake. They are simply out to steal unwitting shoppers’ card details, a business that can enjoy higher margins than any handbag.

From the print edition: Business

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If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it, leaving a comment or subscribing to the RSS feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.

RELATED ARTICLES
» Help Us Fight Fakes, Alibaba's Impassioned Plea to Global Brands
» Taobao Teams Up With Apple, Gucci To Remove Counterfeit Products
» Bank of China Complies With Subpoena In Gucci Counterfeit Case
» Louis Vuitton Files Suit in Connection with Counterfeit Goods on Alibaba