The Dutch police have already received almost 16,000 reports against malicious webshops this year, about 3000 more than last year. Scammers are taking advantage of the physical store closures due to the corona pandemic and are setting up online stores en masse that do not deliver the items on offer at all.
Which writes the AD today. 15,732 declarations, on which the counter is up to the beginning of this month. About 8800 of these were web shops that do not actually exist. There is a promotion with high discounts on products that are never delivered in reality.
In the case of a Philips coffee machine costing 59 euros (instead of 675 euros), the police intervened in good time. As a result, many people were still able to get their money back from the 600 declarations. The site in question no longer exists.
Larger fish pond
Recently was the CBS still investigating to our web shop behaviour. In the past year, more people bought something online (77 percent compared to 71 percent in 2020) and they are often more expensive. 26 percent say they have spent more than 500 euros (was 21 percent).
It is striking that especially older people find their way to online stores more often. 68 percent of 65 to 75-year-olds bought products in a webshop in 2021, compared to 59 percent in 2020. However, for cyber criminals, that also means more potential victims.
The actual number of victims of rogue webshops is probably much higher than 16,000. Previous figures from Statistics Netherlands already showed that only 1 in 12 Dutch people reporting cybercrimeincluding sales fraud.
Black Friday Deals
Many stores now offer high discounts in the context of Black Friday. Keep an eye out for deals that seem too good to be true. And if a webshop gets a lot of negative reviews, it’s better to look further.
We recommend the price fallers page to keep an eye on with our Kieskeurig colleagues. Only legitimate online stores are affiliated with this price comparison website. This way you can be sure that your money does not end up in the hands of scammers.
