.com.au's used for bogus shopping sites

[chris]

A hot topic of discussion this week has been several fake shopping websites that have been shut down after scamming shoppers purchasing electronic goods online.

Con artists have scammed unsuspecting Australians out of thousands of dollars through bogus shopping websites registered using the stolen credentials of legitimate businesses.

Six spurious websites with ".com.au" domain names have been identified in an investigation by West Australian customer protection officials.

The sites, which have now disappeared, took money for cut-price iPads, iPhones, cameras and other gadgets but never sent the goods to customers.

For more info:

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/10/30/aussies-scammed-bogus-shopping-sites

It's good to see it was dealt with swiftly, but what do people think we can do to prevent these incidents in the first place?

Cheers,
Chris

 

[brettf]

What it shows is that the perception that .au is any more or less secure or affords any more 'trust' than any other namespace is a fallacy.

Prevention would involve far more red tape to register a domain. I'd be surprised if anyone on this forum would support that.

 

[findtim]

I had to laugh when I went to read the article.

http://screencast.com/t/6cRg1A075Bn4

classic !

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I've said in other posts that having a bricks and mortar with an online shop makes a customer feel a hell of a lot better in their purchasing decision.

"auDA should have a verification process to determine if the ABN registered for a domain is correct,"

that's like trying to plug a dam wall with a cotton tip !

tim

 

[chris]

Perhaps education and awareness is the best path, recommending use secure payment methods, reinforcing that if it's too good to be true it probably is, etc.