Phantom Online Stores Copying Fake Inventory from Other Stores

drspy00 on 29/06/2019 - 00:15
Last edited 29/06/2019 - 10:24 by 1 other user

I am a collector of various items so always searching for hard to find items.

Lately I have noticed if I search for say a random unusual action figure or the barcode, or model number of the item into google. It comes up with various legitimate looking websites, which seem legit until you see they have a huge stock inventory of rare and unusual items like they have trawled the inventory directly from ebay, or used items that there could only be one of, and not the hundreds in stock they claim to have, and then free post from some far off place.

Has anyone noticed this? The sites seem to end in weird domains like .xyz and it is annoying because you could be mistaken its another store with the same item, but maybe just a scam to get people to believe it and then take the credit card numbers?

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  scrimshaw on 29/06/2019 - 01:39

  Google shopping ads are mostly bogus, they'll show you a mix of real stores but may also list products from fake ones (look out for the "Sponsored Ad" disclaimer on the top right).

  Video from ABC's the Checkout

  and more recently: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/03/how-google-weeds-out-fraud-i…

  Google is using AI now to kick dodgy merchants off it's shopping search results, but you should always assume their algorithm isn't perfect.

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    drspy00 on 29/06/2019 - 02:58

    I actually mean full sites full of copied items that don't Really exist. Not from google shopping.

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      scrimshaw on 29/06/2019 - 13:23

      +1

      They are usually non existent stores. It's incredibly easy to set up a store using online tools like Shopify or Woocommerce and there's no need to register yourself as a business.
      Can also use whois privacy guard to stop people looking at your Whois data but also just as easy to provide fake details when they register the site.