Protect against Shopping Site Skimmers and Fake Shops with the Netcraft Extension

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The current coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the closure of many pubs, restaurants, and brick-and-mortar retail stores. Many purchases that would previously have been made in person now take place online. In research commissioned by Visa
, 89% of Britons have shopped online since the UK’s lockdown restrictions began, with 31% buying items online for the first time during this period. This increase in online shopping activity benefits criminal groups in that: smaller businesses newly reliant on online transactions provide attackers with a stream of inadequately-defended shopping sites to exploit, and buyers are far more likely to be driven to these compromised shops or to fake shops compared to before the pandemic.

JavaScript skimmers
run on compromised shopping sites. When shoppers enter their payment details, the skimmer secretly sends a copy to the attacker – potentially even if the customer does not complete the transaction. Even the most careful of users can be victims of these attacks, as they appear on compromised but otherwise well-intentioned shops with no visual indication of their presence.

Fake shops
are another threat. Shoppers seeking bargains may unknowingly find themselves on a fake shop which claims to offers the products they want at a highly discounted price, but the victim will subsequently only receive counterfeit goods, no goods at all, or have the transaction aborted after entering credentials which is equivalent to a phishing attack.

Fake shops also take advantage of the pandemic
by offering goods in high demand due to coronavirus, such as N95 masks. The FBI has released a Public Service Announcement
about an increase in online shopping scams involving the sale of counterfeit healthcare products such as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). To date, Netcraft has blocked over a thousand such coronavirus-themed fake shops, 80,000 other fake shops selling all sorts of counterfeit goods, and around 3,500 compromised shops hosting JavaScript skimmers.

The Netcraft browser extension and mobile apps
provide protection against fake shops as well as legitimate shopping sites that have been compromised with JavaScript skimmers. When an extension or app user visits one of these dangerous shops, Netcraft will block access to the shop and alert them: