这是在线假冒产品的季节

2020年的假期季节即将来临，现在应该是购物的黄金时间，但这种大流行迫使许多消费者收紧钱包。除了试图避免人群躲避COVID-19之外，今年的数字假日购物者还必须警惕潜伏在电子商务商店中的假冒卖家。

预计今年假期购物者中约有三分之一会减少礼物支出。五分之二的购物者（占39％）计划减少礼物支出。这为诈骗者打开门，以假冒产品降价诱使缺乏金钱的消费者。

购买假冒产品既令人沮丧又危险。今年的黑色星期五可能会推动“灰色市场”的购买量激增。

为了帮助消费者-也许可以使电子商务零售商更好地了解电子商务安全-《电子商务时报》与网络安全专家小组讨论了假日购物问题。他们提供了有关消费者如何避免购买假冒产品的建议；并分析假冒商品如何影响整个零售市场。

VerifyMe首席运营官Keith Goldstein指出，黑色星期五通常是店内购物的黄金时间，但今年将大不相同。

“电子商务采购的增加，加上美国人对价格敏感度的提高，可能会刺激假冒市场。当购物者在网上寻找更便宜的选择时，他们可能会在陌生的网站上或从未经身份验证的供应商处购买商品，这会受到低价和看似相同的产品可以提供更好的交易。”他告诉《电子商务时报》。

他警告说：“不幸的是，这通常太好了，无法实现。”

仿造不利于良好的生意

持续的大流行引发了人们对进入公共场所的新的敏感性，这是促使许多人从自己的家中安全地在线购物的驱动力。戈德斯坦证实，除了购物地点之外，这个假期也将改变消费者的消费金额。

他详细介绍说，在全球大流行迫使许多美国人失业的情况下，研究表明，三分之一的购物者计划在这个假期期间减少总体支出。寻找省钱交易的购物者需要警惕假冒商品。

他说：“对于更广阔的零售市场，假冒产品可能会对销售产生重大影响，而在大多数零售商通常看到最大收入增长的时期，假冒产品会带走购买。”

此外，假冒产品可能会损害特定品牌。戈德斯坦解释说，在不良演员模仿真实产品的情况下，即使购买的产品来自不良卖家，使用特定商品的任何负面影响或产品整体质量不佳也可以归因于真实品牌。

毫无疑问，今年的假日购物会有所不同，为欺诈性商品进入我们的家园创造了新的机会。根据所涉及的市场，消费者健康可能面临更大的风险。

假冒对健康有害

考虑仅一个容易受假冒产品影响的行业-化妆品。香水和化妆品占世界上缉获量最高的商品的5％。假化妆品品牌已知包含有毒成分。

戈德斯坦指出：“假冒具有健康风险的历史，甚至每年由于我们摄入或戴在身体上的欺诈性产品（例如，营养保健品，护肤品，化妆品，香水和其他美容产品）而造成无数的死亡。”

有时，这些假冒产品只是过期而已，因此不再有效。他补充说，但是，这些假冒商品通常会包含危险成分，例如动物排泄物，细菌，致癌物，木材或工业酒精，不合格的淡水成分以及高含量的铝。

戈德斯坦警告说，如果这些大量生产的产品被篡改并作为真实产品进行分发，则可能对全球健康构成威胁。因此，从业务或财务的角度来看，假冒不仅对品牌和零售商不利。

“这也可能使这些公司对顾客的伤害或死亡承担责任。这就是为什么品牌比以往任何时候都更加重要的是，从生产到到达配送中心或零售店时，品牌对其产品进行保护。”高斯坦警告说。

骗子情绪上的猎物

MediaPro 首席学习官汤姆·潘德加斯特（Tom Pendergast）建议，如果您认为现在是假期，那么请考虑本赛季将给网络犯罪分子带来的欢乐。

他告诉《电子商务时报》：“毕竟，他们会抓住节日期间各种形式的人类脆弱性：内，紧迫感，兴奋和狂热的交易。”

Pendergast提供了一份快速的网络安全检查表，为本季度的数字购物者提供了一次争夺机会，以确保在线安全。他的三个技巧涉及有关运输，密码和欺诈防护服务的常识。

第一，如果托运人没有宣布他们是谁，则可以确保他们是假的。您可以考虑在主要的托运人（FedEx，UPS，USPS）上创建帐户，以便控制您的托运通知。

第二，在站点之间使用相同的密码是将单个欺诈事件变成主要问题的诀窍。他建议，改为为您定期购物的地点创建一个唯一的密码，并使用“来宾访问”进行一次性访问。

第三，充分利用信用卡发卡机构提供的欺诈保护功能，切勿直接输入您的银行帐户信息，也不要遵守诸如汇款，预付礼品卡或银行到银行转账之类的不可追回付款要求。

Pendergast说：“借记卡也可以防止欺诈，但是取回钱的过程可能需要更长的时间。”

买家注意

每个人都在寻找折扣。许多网站声称提供这些折扣。在进入数字购物车之前，请三思。

Netenrich首席信息安全官布兰登·霍夫曼（Brandon Hoffman）表示，当人们注册这些类型的网站时，他们通常会使用与许多其他网站相同的密码和电子邮件。

他告诉《电子商务时报》：“这意味着当一个人在看似正常的网站上注册时，他们将放弃对其他许多网站的所有身份验证。”

霍夫曼的第一条建议是对那笔过于真实的交易表示怀疑。而且，请使用不同的密码。

他补充说：“很难记住每个密码，因此我建议使用密码管理器，以提供一种安全的方法来存储和记住这些密码。”

安全团队可能会对欺诈活动保持高度警惕，但这可能使其他一些关注的标准领域蒙上阴影。反过来，这可能会为直接针对零售商的较不明显的策略留下一个盲点。

通过提供早期访问或特殊交易，避免可能导致恶意软件或网络钓鱼尝试的交易的潜在恶意链接。

霍夫曼建议：“用户应谨慎行事，并特别在所使用的网站或应用中进行操作，而不是单击横幅广告或电子邮件，除非对该电子邮件进行了审查或验证。”

首先进行研究，然后单击“购买”

对于那些在数字危险悬崖上徘徊的购物者来说，戈德斯坦也许是最明智的建议。对于消费者而言，尤其是从在线零售商处购买时，最重要的是研究。

他建议，通过查看公司及其产品的评论来做到这一点。记住：有烟的地方有火。

另外，请务必记住，在一个网站上找到打标极少的产品很少。他推断，如果您在其他任何地方都找不到可比较的价格，则可能是因为他们所出售的产品已过期且已过期，或者仅仅是非法且有潜在危害。

戈德斯坦敦促说：“如果可能的话，直接从品牌所有者的网站而不是电子商务购物网站购买商品，而这些网站已成为造假者的垃圾场。”

网上购物者还应该进一步进行品牌评估程序。一些供应商在其电子商务站点上提供的使用保护。

例如，许多公司正在投资固定在产品上的跟踪技术，以保护其不受伪造。这通常包括看不见的，不可复制的代码，仓库分销商和零售公司可以对其进行扫描，以指示供应链中的商品是否被篡改。

这项技术可以保护整个零售供应链中的产品。它还可以通过可见的QR码使用，消费者可以使用智能手机轻松扫描以证明其真实性。

戈德斯坦说：“这项技术为购物者提供了所购买产品的透明度，同时还有助于提高品牌声誉和客户忠诚度。”

The 2020 holiday season is upon us and it should be prime time for shopping, but the pandemic has forced many consumers to tighten their purse strings. Besides trying to avoid crowds to dodge COVID-19, this year's digital holiday shoppers have to be wary of counterfeit sellers lurking within e-commerce stores.

It's projected that about one-third of this year's holiday shoppers are cutting back their gift spending. Two in five shoppers (39 percent) plan to spend less on gifts, specifically. That opens the door for scammers to entice money-starved consumers with fake price cuts on products.

Purchasing counterfeit products is both frustrating and dangerous. This year's Black Friday could drive a surge in purchases from the "gray market."

To help consumers -- and perhaps give e-tailers a heads up about better e-commerce security -- the E-Commerce Times discussed holiday shopping issues with a panel of cybersecurity experts. They offered advice on how consumers can avoid buying counterfeit products; and analyses of how fake goods affect the broader retail market.

Black Friday is usually primetime for in-store shopping, but this year will be much different, observed Keith Goldstein, chief operating officer at VerifyMe.

"The uptick in e-commerce purchases along with Americans' heightened price sensitivities could give a boost to the counterfeit market. As shoppers look for cheaper options online, they may find themselves on unfamiliar websites or purchasing from unauthenticated vendors, tempted by low prices and better deals for seemingly the same product," he told the E-Commerce Times.

"Unfortunately, this is usually too good to be true," he warned.

Knockoffs Bad for Good Businesses

New sensitivities about going into public spaces that the ongoing pandemic has sparked is the driving force moving many people to shop online from the safety of their homes. Beyond where they shop, this holiday season will also change how much consumers spend, confirmed Goldstein.

Amid the global pandemic that forced many Americans out of work, research shows that one-third of shoppers plan to spend less overall this holiday season, he detailed. Shoppers looking for deals to save money need to be on the lookout for fake merchandise.

"For the broader retail market, counterfeiting can have a major impact on sales, taking away purchases during a time when most retailers typically see their biggest revenue boost," he explained.

Additionally, counterfeiting can harm specific brands. With bad actors imitating real products, any negative side effect of using a particular item or the overall poor quality of the product could be attributed to the real brand, even if the product purchased came from a bad seller, explained Goldstein.

No doubts exist that this year's holiday shopping will be different, creating new opportunities for fraudulent goods to enter our homes. Depending on the markets involved, consumer health can be more at risk.

Counterfeits Harmful to Health

Consider just one industry that is easily affected by counterfeit products -- cosmetics. Perfumes and cosmetics account for five percent of the world's most seized goods. Fake cosmetic brands are known to contain toxic ingredients.

"Counterfeiting has a history of health risks and even causes countless deaths each year through fraudulent products that we ingest or put on our bodies such as nutraceuticals, skincare, cosmetics, fragrances, and other beauty products," Goldstein noted.

Sometimes these fake products are simply expired and therefore no longer effective. However, oftentimes these counterfeit goods can contain dangerous ingredients like animal excrement, bacteria, carcinogens, wood or industrial alcohol and sub-standard watered-down ingredients, and high levels of aluminum, he added.

If these mass-produced items are tampered with and distributed as real products, it could create a global health threat, warned Goldstein. Therefore, counterfeiting is not just bad for brands and retailers from a business or financial perspective.

"It could also make these companies liable for harm to, or deaths of, customers. This is why it is more important than ever that brands protect their products from the time they are manufactured to when they reach a distribution center or retail floor," Goldstein cautioned.

Crooks Prey on Emotions

If you think it is the holiday season for you, think of the joy this season will bring to cybercriminals, suggested Tom Pendergast, chief learning officer at MediaPro.

"After all, they get to prey on all manner of human vulnerabilities that come to the fore during the holiday season: guilt, urgency, excitement, and a frenzy for deals," he told the E-Commerce Times.

Pendergast offered a quick cybersecurity checklist to give digital shoppers a fighting chance this season to stay safer online. His three tips involve common sense regarding shipping, passwords, and fraud protection services.

One, if the shipper fails to announce who they are, you can be sure they are fake. You might consider creating accounts at the major shippers (FedEx, UPS, USPS) so that you control your shipping notifications.

Two, using the same password from site to site is a recipe for turning a single instance of fraud into a major problem. Instead, create a unique password for places you shop regularly and use "guest access" for single-use visits, he suggested.

Three, take advantage of the fraud protection provided by credit card issuers, never enter your banking account information directly, or comply with requests for non-recoverable payments like money transfers, pre-paid gifts cards, or bank-to-bank transfers.

"Debit cards are also protected from fraud, but the process to recover your money may take longer," said Pendergast.

Buyer Be Aware

Everyone is looking for a discount. Many websites claim to provide these discounts. Think before you get to the digital shopping cart.

When people register for these types of sites, they quite often use the same password and email as they would for many other sites, according to Brandon Hoffman, chief information security officer at Netenrich.

"This means when a person registers on a seemingly normal website, they are giving up all their authentication for many other sites," he told the E-Commerce Times.

Hoffman's first piece of advice is to be suspicious of that too-good-be-true deal. But also, use different passwords.

"It is hard to remember every password, so I would recommend a password manager to provide a secure method of storing and remembering those passwords," he added.

Security teams will likely be on high alert for fraudulent activity, but that may overshadow some other standard areas of focus. That, in turn, can leave a blind spot for less overt tactics against retailers directly.

Avoid potential malvertising links for deals that lead to malware or phishing attempts by offering early access or special deals.

"Users should exercise caution and operate specifically within the websites or apps they are using, as opposed to clicking on banner ads or emails, unless the email has been vetted or verified," Hoffman advised.

Research First, Click Buy Later

Perhaps Goldstein has the most sage advice for shoppers teetering on the digital danger cliff. The most important thing for consumers to consider when making purchases, especially from online retailers, is to research.

Do that by looking at reviews of the company and their products, he suggested. Remember: where there is smoke, there is fire.

Also, it is important to keep in mind that finding an extremely marked down product on one website is rare. If you cannot find a comparable price anywhere else, it is likely because the product they are selling is old and expired, or simply illegitimate and potentially harmful, he reasoned.

"If possible, buy directly from a brand owner's website rather than e-commerce shopping sites, which have become dumping grounds for counterfeiters," urged Goldstein.

Online shoppers should also take the brand evaluation process a step further. Use protections some vendors provide on their e-commerce sites.

For instance, many companies are investing in track-and-trace technologies that are fixed onto products to protect them from counterfeiting. This typically includes invisible, non-replicable codes that can be scanned by warehouse distributors and retail companies to indicate if goods in the supply chain were tampered with.

This technology protects products throughout the retail supply chain. It also can be used via visible QR codes that consumers can easily scan with a smartphone to prove authenticity.

"This technology provides shoppers with transparency into the products they have purchased while also helping with brand reputation and customer loyalty," said Goldstein.