Introduction to Fake shops
Fake shops are deceptive online stores designed to scam consumers by pretending to be legitimate businesses. These fraudulent sites often replicate well-known brands and exploit consumers’ trust to steal money and personal information.
Australian brands and consumers are being targeted, between January and September 2023, the National Anti-Scam Centre received more than 2700 reports from Aussies scammed by fake online stores.
Brandsec assists Australian brands to identify and remove fake shops across web, social media and other platforms. Let’s explore how these fake shops operate and target brands, and how we can help!
How Fake shops Target Brands
1. Fake Ads Branded Domain Names Optimized for Google
Technique: Scammers create domain names that closely resemble a brand’s official website, using slight variations or common misspellings. These domains are optimized with search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to appear high in Google search results.
Thousands of Domains: Scammers use Domain Generation Algorithms (DAGs) to register hundreds or even thousands of domain names targeting specific brands. These domains are rotated frequently to avoid detection, making them challenging to track and shut down.
Impact: Consumers searching for a brand may inadvertently land on these fake sites, believing them to be legitimate due to their high search engine ranking.
2. Meta Ads and Expired Domain Names
Technique: Scammers acquire expired domains that previously had good search engine rankings (Search Engine Results Pages – SERP). They then repurpose these domains to host fake shops.
Traffic Source: These sites are often promoted through advertisements on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, redirecting unsuspecting users to the fraudulent sites.
Meta Ads: Bad actors will purchase hundreds of verified Facebook Accounts to deploy sometimes thousands of ads targeting a specific brand. These ads are often only deployed for 24 – 48 hours to avoid detection.
Technical Signals of Fake shops
Despite the different targeting strategies, fake shops share several technical similarities:
Use of Cloudflare: To mask their IP addresses and hide the true location of their servers.
Built on WordPress: Leveraging the ease of use and flexibility of the WordPress platform to quickly set up and manage fake shops.
WooCommerce Plugin: Fake shop WooCommerce plugin offers easy to deploy shops with branded catalogs.
Fake PayPal payment option – that switches you to credit card on settlement
Non-compliant Chinese Registrars: Often using registrars that do not adhere to abuse regulations
How brandsec Addresses Fake shops
Fake shop Audit: Understand the threat to your brand
brandsec deploys a number of techniques to find all domain names involved in a fakeshop network targeting our Clients, including but not limited to:
Domain Name and Hostname Review: We set up monitors and audit domain names and hostnames to identify and flag suspicious activities.
Social Media Profile Review: Scanning social media platforms for fake profiles and advertisements that direct traffic to fraudulent sites.
Advertisements: Identifying, recording and reporting deceptive ads that lead consumers to fake shops.
Monitoring & Detection
Brandsec implements advanced AI-driven algorithms to scan and analyze web traffic patterns for anomalies indicative of fake shops, such as sudden spikes in activity or unusual geographic access points.
We utilize domain monitoring tools to track the registration of new domains that contain brand-related keywords, and analyse for Fake shop content.
Through Unphish automated screenshot grabbers regularly capture and review website content for rapid identification and takedown of fake shops.
Takedown Fake Shops
Brandsec collaborates with domain registrars and hosting providers to suspend and deactivate fraudulent domains, effectively taking down the fake shops.
We work closely with Google and other search engines to delist these sites, ensuring they do not appear in search results.
Additionally, we coordinate with social media platforms to identify and remove fake profiles and deceptive ads that drive traffic to these fraudulent sites.