Understanding the Various Methods Electronic Fraudsters Employ to Deceive Consumers
Like all technology, artificial intelligence can be used for good or for bad. Currently, AI has been widely used in electronic commerce, especially by banks, to detect procedures that show fraud attempts. It is worth remembering that fraudsters themselves also use artificial intelligence to, by capturing part of customer data, seek to identify missing data by trial and error. Guilherme Guimarães Feliciano, associate professor at the Department of Labor Law and Social Security at the Faculty of Law at USP, recalls that nowadays it is very common to use artificial intelligence to, using images of a celebrity, carry out misleading sales.
“A very recent example involves the so-called deep fakes […] for example, from a certain social network, a piece is published in which a certain celebrity, an athlete or an artist invites the consumer to visit a certain store and purchase products there, services etc.; However, in reality, this celebrity never recorded these images, they are being produced with artificial intelligence and are advertising an equally fake store. A store that was maliciously structured on the network just to capture customer data.”
In order to avoid fraud when purchasing a product or service over the internet, the recommendation is to use well-known websites that have physical stores. “Be very careful with websites that appear suddenly, with little-known brands and unusual proposals. Often, the so-called China business, an expression used to identify excellent businesses, actually just hide scams. These are just opportunities for embezzlement, these frauds in e-commerce. These are electronic frauds.”
The professor explains that a well-known scam is carried out using links sent to consumers, through which they are urged to resolve a problem on a certain page and there clarify a purchase that was not made or make a purchase that is offered to an “excellent” value. Strictly speaking, the website does not exist and online stores and fake pages are very common and can cause harm, as they capture consumer data and allow it to be used to commit other frauds. These stores stay up long enough to cause a lot of damage, and when they are discovered, they are shut down.
Fake pages
A much worse situation and, according to the professor, much easier to do are fake pages. “So, in fact, there isn’t even a virtual store. It’s just the fake page that emulates, for example, the bank’s page. Another precaution that the consumer must take is to be suspicious of those products and services that are offered at a price that is too low, unrealistic, a price that does not correspond to what is generally found on the market, on the contrary, it is much lower than that.”
To ensure security and avoid fraud, it is best to carry out banking activities or purchases directly at the establishment. One of the most common frauds carried out is that of confirmed purchases. “The person receives a phone call, a message via SMS, WhatsApp or email, informing them that a purchase of 8 thousand or so reais has been made, which has been confirmed, and the debit will be made on the next month’s invoice. If, by chance, you did not make this purchase, click here on the link, if it is a message. Generally, the link may lead to a false page, or, over the phone, the individual will say that they did not make the purchase, and then the swindler will transfer the call to another swindler, who will collect the personal information that the consumer, naively, he will be transmitting, imagining that, by doing so, he will solve the problem. This fraud has worked a lot and therefore has increased, reports Feliciano.”
Other common frauds, cited in research, are false advertising – in which a product is advertised at a very good price on a false link and website just to capture the data or to obtain the amount charged, but the product is never delivered – and card data theft, which occurs when the swindler obtains, in some way, sometimes even physically, all the data contained on it.
The injured consumer can act in a variety of ways, depending on the type of fraud, but the first step is to file a police report. Once this is documented, you can look for the company; If it refuses to solve the problem, you must resort to Procon and, as a last resort, legal action.