Sales sites, ads, virtual auctions be careful !!! Thought: Ingenuity and Scarce Attention, Technical Ignorance...

With the advent of the internet, several online sales systems have emerged, especially the famous virtual auction sites, where people wanting to sell something can offer it to those who offer the most via the internet. The precursor was the famous EBay in the USA, then appeared the others.

In Brazil also appeared several, Lokau, MercadoLivre, Arremate, iBazar etc ... with time some disappeared and others united and consolidated. The system and concept are excellent and as time goes by, I personally confess that I am a user of one of these systems.

The problem is that, predictably, the scammers also saw "deals" and opportunities in these systems and began to develop more or less elaborate frauds. Here are some of the most frequent ones, so far as auction sites are concerned:

1) Fake account: Account in the virtual auction system, opened with false data and documents, offering very attractive goods (such as type and price), with the sole purpose of receiving payment in advance, in an account also opened with false documents, promising then send the goods and then disappear. Because it takes a while before the buyer / victim worries and reports, scammers have an advantage and can apply the coup several times before disappearing. In this case usually the qualification of the salesperson (ie the note and the history he has), in the virtual auction system, is null because the accounts are always very recent.

2) Adulterated pages: Offers published using failures of virtual auction systems, which make bids appear to be true and seller having high qualifications (again taking advantage of system failures that allow to show reproductions of the original page of the auction system). In reality they redirect to another system or to another address where the coup is applied for, requesting the payment in advance, as always.

3) Triangulation of payments: Fraud where the scammer applies a much more elaborate scheme to potentially have fewer problems (especially not having to go through a fake bank account or in the name of oranges). At the same time the scammer does the following:

A) negotiate the purchase of some expensive merchandise with some victim who is offering it, and requests the account number to make the payment in advance;

B) offers a non-existent merchandise for sale, other victims respond and he asks to make the payment in the account that the first victim provided;

C) As soon as the payment is made, it requests the delivery of the merchandise by the first victim (usually with delivery in the subway or some other public place, without providing an address);

D) When victims of non-existent sales report, the first victim is left with the problem and may end up having to return the money and thus losing their merchandise.

4) Payment with diverted funds: Phenomenon in fast growth due to the increase of digital frauds of the type phishing. In this case, hackers who have invaded bank accounts through password stealing through trojans or phishing sites use this access to third-party money to make payment deposits for goods (harder to track than a transfer to some private individuals or small businesses. The seller will then have problems with the banks and authorities, suffering account lockups and possible inquiries.

The system of virtual auctions, being largely based on mutual trust, is naturally exposed to the action of the coup-takers who take advantage of this characteristic.

If you want to operate auctions and virtual purchases / sales via the internet, my advice is to only accept transactions with cash payment (if you are a seller) and at the time of delivery of the goods (if you are a buyer), better still if next to the stores or at least with an address to deliver / withdraw (not on the street).

A good alternative is the use of one of the several "secure payment" systems where a respected third party takes care of receiving the money, and the relative confirmation and guarantee for the seller, who, however, will receive the payment only if there is no claim of the buyer, that is, if the goods are properly received. In this way both parties are guaranteed to receive what is owed to them (money on one side and merchandise on the other). Examples of such systems are UOL's PagSeguro and MercadoLivre's MercadoPago.

Another key aspect is learning how to appropriately use all the features that the auction systems themselves have developed to protect their users.

In particular, it is worth learning to appropriately use vendor qualification systems, where it is advisable to ALWAYS give preference to old, well-educated, predominantly positive sellers.

Virtual stores and sales ads

A slightly different case is that of the websites of sales (e-commerce) or ads. In this case, scammers often simply advertise a commodity by taking advantage of fictitious or stolen data, orange companies or ghosts or the good name of real companies (which, however, have nothing to do with the coup and do not even know what is happening), which is used only by changing contact phones.

Synthetically the coup involves an alleged sale, against payment of the full amount or an advance (if the amount is high). The proposed merchandise always has price and / or attractive conditions and many facilities are presented. The location (or supposed to be) is always far from the victims, to make it difficult to find out. In reality, the merchandise does not exist and will never be delivered since the aim of the scammers is to receive payment of the amount or advance and disappear.

The companies, or supposed, that offer these goods in most cases do not exist and do not have a fixed address (or a landline) ... try to conduct the whole operation by e-mail or by electronic channel (MSN, Skype. ..), so that it can disappear without leaving many traces. Often they mount sites or virtual sales outlets, apparently serious but that will be taken out of the air as soon as it was time to disappear.

Goods frequently proposed in these scams are all electro-electronics (from computers and digital cameras to plasma TVs and sound systems), medicines (especially those against sexual dysfunctions or those not authorized in Brazil) and cars and motorcycles (famously the "Ghost car").

The advice, again, is to limit your purchases to virtual stores of known, serious, possibly large, well-known and well-known companies with a fixed address and telephone number for contact (which should be checked to see if it works and if it is even of that company) and distrust of very advantageous proposals and totally "virtual" companies.

It should be mentioned that the presence on the page of the known "security lock" (figures below) does not guarantee in any way the suitability of the site or the company that manages it, let alone the security and reliability of the transaction or commercial proposal. The "lock" only serves to ensure that the information exchanged between the site server and the user's computer is protected by encryption (via an SSL certificate) and therefore not subject to interception.

Another frequent variant relates to advertisements for rental of houses and apartments, mainly for holidays but also abroad (for holidays or for migrants). In this case the coup resides in the signal, entry or advance or other type of previous collection. What is sent are always pictures of beautiful apartments with attractive rental conditions. There are never any availability problems, even in high season.

It is also worth mentioning the existence of variants of this coup applied by foreigners (mainly Africans, sometimes living in Europe or the United States), on Brazilian or international advertising sites. In this case, they will normally request the shipment of the values for "sign or entry" through the famous Western Union or similar systems.

There are also cases in which the victim is the seller, especially when the alleged buyer adopts systems as described in section (4) above (on auction sites). In this case the advice is to always wait a few days to see if there are no problems or locks with the deposit received.