Copycat websites are increasingly popping up on the internet, stealing customers’ money and damaging e-tailers’ branding and trusted reputation. So far, most brands have tolerated the threat but seemed powerless to prevent it; This scenario may be starting to change.
Digital perpetrators offer sham sales of products and services to trick consumers into placing orders on fake online brand websites. Victims provide payment details but never receive the goods. These scam sites look almost exactly like real company websites and are therefore difficult to spot.
To combat this e-commerce theft, some cybersecurity experts suggest that businesses and marketers get proactive solutions to find and remove fake websites. Additionally, by creating social media accounts across all social platforms, marketing teams can protect their brand image, whether the account is actively used for marketing purposes or not.
According to Josh Shaul, CEO of Allure Security and co-author of Practical Oracle Security: Your Unauthorized Guide to Relational Database Security, marketers are tasked with building customer relationships and trust to keep customers loyal and doing business with them .
“You have to do it by more than an arm’s length. However, marketing teams are not prepared for what happens when their brand and digital presence are stolen and used in ways they don’t want. That’s a big problem,” Shaul told the E-Commerce Times.
He added that preventing fake websites is not the job of the marketing department either. This is usually a matter for the legal entities, if the company directors agree.
Fraud causes misplaced blame
E-commerce has changed a lot in recent years. Scammers set up fake websites or create fake social media profiles and lure victims with a text or direct message on social media.
This approach is nothing new. But today there are many more people online who are unaware of such pitfalls, Shaul noted. Consumers tend to view such scams as complicit behavior on the part of retailers.
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From a consumer perspective, when the consumer arrives at a fake website, the consumer does not question the authenticity of the website, nor does he assume that a criminal has stolen the identity of that brand and is using it for a scam.
Instead, many people blame the brand when they realize they are a victim. They spread the word to their friends to avoid doing business with that brand, Shaul offered.
Such situations are nightmares for the brand and its marketing organization to clean up. In addition, the brand cannot reimburse the cost of lost sales and reputational damage.
“It’s a problem that might have been ignored in the past, but not today because of its severity,” he noted.
Build a quick reaction bridge
The job of marketers is to build the story of the brand and build consumer trust. Shaul argues that when bad actors are stealing brand equity by using a fake website for their own profit, one shouldn’t constantly focus on repairing reputation.
This bridge better connects everyone in the organization to the same goal – protecting the integrity of the brand. All businesses want to protect customers from fraud.
“Security teams are absolutely the right functional area today to address this issue because they have the infrastructure to deal with website issues,” Shaul said. “But they are overwhelmed with too many projects and don’t have enough budget.”
He claims that a fast, real-time response strategy to a newly emerging incident like a fake website would go a long way in cooperatively minimizing the worsening problem.
Marketers, increase your budget
Shaul believes that building a bridge of collaboration between marketers, business leaders and security teams will reduce increasing friction. He added that differences in each department’s operating budgets cause much of the conflict.
He shared his view from the security side and addressed the common frustrations of network security teams. He claimed that marketing departments get a lot of money while also making a lot of mistakes that security teams have to clean up.
Marketing gets a lot of money to pay for advertising and branding. Security budgeting usually falls short because the brand doesn’t see it as a moneymaker. The costs incurred by impersonated websites are not part of the equation.
“I think the simple answer I was alluding to is the marketing community saying, ‘We have a common interest in protecting the brand and our customers by stopping these things. You have the skills, but you don’t have the tools and funding. We have the funding; Let’s get you the tools,’” Shaul explained.
Customer Relationship Disaster
Brands suffer greater damage when customers are scammed on a fraudulent website. The victim loses money in a bogus transaction and the brand loses customer loyalty, resulting in ongoing lost sales.
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People don’t know that others have been scammed too. Dealing with each victim is a one-on-one situation for the brand, resulting in many victims vowing never to favor that brand again.
Brands begin to realize that a more widespread problem exists when hundreds of customer service callers a week complain that they never received the goods they ordered.
The situation is getting even more negative for the brand’s customer service representatives, Shaul suggested. You have to deal with telling the victim that the company is not responsible for refunding the lost money because a crook stole the brand’s identity.
Brands risk retaliation
The effects vary depending on the type of provider being impersonated. On the banking side, research shows that 38% of bank website fraud victims leave the bank entirely. Shaw noted that a local New Hampshire bank sees about 30 or 40 scams a week targeting their customers.
Oftentimes, fake website scams gain prominence by advertising on a trustworthy site. So you click Facebook or maybe Bloomberg and read the news and an ad pops up, Shaul explained.
An unsuspecting person sees a link to a popular product at an almost unbeatable price, and clicking the link takes the victim to a similar site. As a result, defrauded consumers lose all trust in the brand that “scammed” them out of money.
“Ecommerce retailers need to address the overall impact of losing control of their brand. It’s a big deal, and it’s not hard to see that when someone starts using your brand against you, it can have a huge impact on your business very quickly,” he said.
Whose problem is it?
Brands have not made this a higher priority for a number of reasons. According to Shaul, companies have tried to solve the problem over the years but have failed.
He admitted that corporate leaders have gotten used to dealing with identity fraud and there is only complacency.
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Another problem is who owns this problem. Is it a marketing issue? Is it a security issue or a fraud issue? He added that it’s a bit in the crosshairs of all these different departments.
“The lack of clear ownership does not mean the issue is being ignored. But it’s deprioritized,” Shaul lamented. “Companies are currently doing almost nothing in the field of cyber security that is not required by regulatory requirements or insurance.”
How brands can defend themselves
Shaul added that brands have success stories for staying ahead of this problem. The process involves getting security to the point where it can quickly detect and respond to these scams.
Scammers need to establish themselves on the internet, trick victims into breaking into their scam and trick them into giving up their details. It all has a schedule that is sometimes fast and sometimes not.
According to Shaul, some cybersecurity firms like Allure Security have developed new digital tools to help brand security teams find and respond to incidents in real time. Part of this new toolset needs to use more artificial intelligence to track down fake websites by learning to spot tiny anomalies in the logo or content.
One tactic Shaul preaches to ecommerce brand managers is creating a strong social media presence. This strategy is crucial, even if those responsible for the brand do not want to get involved in it.
“In my opinion, attending some of these is not optional for a brand manager [social media] things,” he said.
Companies that fail to claim their brand on these platforms open the door for anyone to impersonate that identity. All it takes is a subtle URL change for attackers to steal traffic from legitimate retail sites.
