Christmas shoppers in Tipperary urged to be wary has raft of online shopping frauds occur

Tipperary shoppers, especially online shoppers, are being urged to take extra caution when purchasing gifts online as a spate of online shopping fraud cases are being reported ahead of the Christmas celebrations.

Online shopping fraud is an increasing trend being seen, especially in the run up to Christmas and is also called purchase fraud.

The business community are frequently targeted by fraudsters using stolen or compromised credit cards, bank accounts or payments, in what is called Card Not Present Fraud.

Businesses who are victims of this fraud will suffer losses under the ‘charge back’ process.

In the first 10 months of 2022, 1,356 Card Not Present Frauds have been reported to An Garda Síochána in Ireland, representing an average loss of €959 or a total of €1,300,527.00.

Some cases of shopping fraud that occurred recently was the case of a 53-year-old female who purchased a phone online, but when she received the phone she reported it is a counterfeit. Another was a reported case of an 18-year-old male who sold his phone online. They met the buyer and handed over the phone, the money was never transferred to the victims account.

The Golden Rules for Christmas shopping online:

• Buy from trusted sources - Make sure the website you are on is real – not cloned or fake. Make sure there is an "https" at the beginning of the web address and a padlock symbol displayed beside the URL before the purchase is made - this indicates a secure connection. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. A URL is nothing more than the address of a given unique resource on the Web

• Another way of determining whether a site is real or not is to look for the trust seals - Trust seals are commonly placed on homepages, login pages, and checkout pages. They’re immediately recognizable and they remind visitors that they are secure on this page. YOU CAN CLICK ON THEM TO SEE IF REAL

 
• Know the website’s policy on refunds and know your consumer rights. They are protected if proper site used

• Where selling platforms offer an official, safe way of paying, use this rather than sending money directly to a third party – otherwise use an online payment option such as PayPal, which helps to protect you.

 
• Check their payment methods – should be credit cards. Never transfer money direct or pay cash. Ensure data transfer is secure

• If a website is asking you to send money to a random PayPal address, wire it by Western Union, pay in iTunes gift cards or only deals in cryptocurrency, that should send up a red flag. The majority of the time, those methods are done to avoid scrutiny and ensure that a transaction can’t be reversed.

 
• Don’t enter into off site communication for a lower cash price

• Never purchase through social media or where the ‘offer’ came to you via social media

• Do not under any circumstances use public Wi-Fi when making payments - switch to 3G/4G on your phone if necessary

 
• Independently visit the website of the online sales company as opposed to clicking on social media or pop-up adverts