Scam of the Week: Phantom Storefronts

This month, a domain first registered in 2008 changed hands. Less than two hours later, social media ads began flowing to people throughout the US, Europe, and Australia, depicting trendy products:

These ads point to product pages on online storefronts that advertise limited-time discounts. Storefronts are filled with recognizable brands and trust indicators, which online buyers lean on for purchasing decisions.

Once you enter credit card details, you pay the discounted price, but you don’t get the product. No new iPhone, no workout machine, no e-bike. No money back. Nowhere to leave a review, and nobody to complain to… by the time you give up on the order, the site will already be gone.

“I ordered a home stereo and never received it. It’s been three weeks.”

How it works

Many people have submitted these websites via Jacana’s free scam check tool, which allows you to quickly check if any website or message is legit or a scam.

What on the surface looks like lazily created shopping sites unravels into a complex operation with thousands of ad accounts, hundreds of domains, and multiple legal entities overseas. When domains or ad accounts are taken down, another one is seamlessly swapped in, so there are always live ads and storefronts deceiving users.

To circumvent detection, many storefronts are hosted on aged domains. This is enough to throw off scam check tools which rely on weak signals like domain age or an SSL certificate, which say little about the actual risk of the site. So if you Google one of these sites, you’re likely to find trust/risk scores indicating that it’s “Likely safe”, and little else.

What we’re doing about it

Jacana finds fingerprints in the code and infrastructure of scam sites, and proactively investigates related domains, so that we can confidently tell you, in plain language, “ This is a scam.”

Jacana does it’s research, then tells you in plain language ‘This is a scam.’ hellojacana.com/check/website/nnhdtk.com

If you come across one of these sites, head over to Jacana Scam Check for a breakdown of what’s going on, and recommendations on what to do next.

Or, [download the Jacana app](http://download the https://hellojacana.com/products) for always-on scam protection – Jacana spots scams proactively, so you don’t have to catch every one yourself. The most dangerous moments are the ones you don’t recognize as suspicious until it’s too late.