London - The internet is a shoppers’ paradise. At the click of a button, you can snap up anything from your weekly food shop to a rare collectible, a holiday, or a car.
But the boom in online trade has also made the internet a target for crooks, who use lookalike websites to dupe shoppers out of millions of pounds every year.
Customers part with hundreds — sometimes thousands — of pounds in a single purchase, in the belief they’re shopping safely on bona fide websites, not realising that they’ve been lured to a bogus alternative.The biggest victims are households buying items on auction websites and holidaymakers hunting for bargains online.
Online auction scams masquerading as firms such as eBay lure buyers via an email or pop-up advert, purporting to be from the real firm. These whisk you to a false website.
The shopper then buys an item and pays by cheque or bank transfer. The scam only emerges days or weeks later when the item fails to turn up — and your money has vanished.
Industry sources suggest between £8-million and £20-million a year is lost to these so-called clone websites. Fraudsters are also increasingly targeting popular websites such as Owners Direct, Airbnb and Home Away, which list hundreds of holiday homes and flats to rent. Crooks either hack into these sites or, more commonly, list a number of fake properties to tempt customers to hand over cash.
The fraud becomes clear only when a requested confirmation email fails to materialise.
In the worst cases, though, families have been stranded overseas after turning up at properties only to find their booking doesn’t exist.
Fraudsters are stealing more than £2-million a year in these holiday booking scams from UK holidaymakers, figures from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau show.
More than 4 500 such cases were reported last year.
A spokesman for the industry body Financial Fraud Action UK says: “It’s no surprise conmen are targeting these types of purchases — holidays and cheap goods on auction sites.
“This makes it even more important to be vigilant. Even though it’ll take an extra hour or so, always do your research to be wary of any scams affecting your type of purchase — and double-check what you’re buying.”
Laura Parks, 22, from Thirsk, North Yorkshire, purchased a Valentine’s break for her husband, Sean, a soldier on leave from Afghanistan, last year.
Laura had found the lodge, near Loch Ness, advertised on Facebook, and clicked through to a professional-looking site online. She paid nearly £400 (about R7 000) for the booking.
But when the couple arrived in Scotland, their trip unravelled in a matter of moments, when it emerged the lodge’s real owners knew nothing of their booking.
To their horror, it turned out that conmen had used pictures from a genuine listing website. In all, including the cost of petrol and emergency accommodation, the couple lost out on £1 000.
Rachel Garner was also caught out when she booked a holiday through rental firm HomeAway in February this year.
Although the holiday apartment she had booked did exist, fraudsters had hacked into the owner’s account and persuaded Mrs Garner that she was dealing with them.
The 44-year-old, from east London, says: “Although I was looking at the genuine Home Away website, when I emailed the ‘owner’, the email I received was from fraudsters.
“Stupidly, I made an online bank transfer of £1 220, only to discover some days later that we had been victims of fraud.
“Normally, I would only give a deposit, but it was such a good deal that I was happy to pay it all upfront, before the deal vanished. Now, I know why.”
Mrs Garner was eligible for £750 back from HomeAway’s insurance service.
She says: “In the future, I will always pay by credit card.
“There may be fewer properties available, because not everyone can accept payment this way — but at least I’ll be safer.” - Daily Mail