According to IMRG, at least 90 percent of internet users will be doing some level of Christmas shopping online, with 70 percent even planning to do more than half of their Christmas shopping using the World Wide Web.
Various predictions like IMRG have stated that for internet retail during this time, Christmas 2009 would mark the greatest growth in internet sales, highlighted further by the widely-anticipated ‘Manic Monday’ on the 7th of December.
Taking all this information into account, more people will be shopping online in this period than ever before.
Therefore, there is a greater importance for consumers to be wary of the dangers of internet shopping, and not fall for the numerous traps out there.
In fact, only yesterday, the team at Gillissa encountered a problem, which we duly notified Google of.
Immediately, our attention was drawn to the fact that for a search query, two adverts within the sponsored links section had identical headlines and descriptive text.
An unusual sight in itself, we decided to explore the two adverts further.
By clicking on the adverts, we found that the link offered a redirect from the display URL to websites with completely different domain names.
Instantly, we knew this website was dubious as Google does not permit the use of redirects.
Furthermore, all of the multiple sites created for the adverts were almost identical in presentation and layout, with duplicate content.
Pricing in US dollars yet advertising in the United Kingdom, the websites all contained atrocious forms of spelling for the simplest of everyday words.
Exploration to the shopping cart presented more evidence that this particular website/s was not legitimate.
We discovered that the websites did not have viable SSL certificates, and had obtained a variation of an SSL certificate that can be easily obtained within a matter of minutes.
With all this evidence, it is safe to assume that is website was attempting to commit fraud, rather than advertise products competitively.
Hopefully the factors we found can save you from being a victim of fraud!
To find out more ways of avoiding illegitimate websites, please use the following link: