Holidays are almost here, and online stores are preparing actively. And being so involved in this process they forget about malefactors. Who, by all means, are just as active during this period. They figure out the ways to trick buyers and take their money. While it might seem that it’s only a customer who becomes a victim here, the e-commerce brand suffers too because its reputation gets compromised.
It’s important to remember about the possibility of your online store becoming a sweet source of income for hackers, even if you own a small brand. In this article, we will see how malefactors trick buyers during the holiday season and figure out ways to protect your e-commerce website.
Payment frauds, how are they executed?
Usually, the goal of malefactors is either to make a purchase with the money of an unsuspecting customer or steal the bank card data. In both situations, it might be not just your reputation that suffers. You might also face significant money losses. Here is how it works.
Let’s say, a hacker purchased a product on behalf of a customer. You’re shipping the order. Then the card issuer of this customer charges your online store — you have to pay for the sold product, and also you have to pay a chargeback fee which varies from $20 to $100. Why did it happen? Because that customer saw an unknown transaction in their bank account and contacted the card issuer. The latter traces this transaction back to you and charges this order back to you plus the fee. The result is that a customer loses nothing, a hacker receives a purchase, and you lose both money and a shipped product.
If you are sure that malefactors won’t target your store because it’s quite small, think twice. Hackers aim at unprotected websites. They know how to find an online shop that’s not safeguarded from frauds even if they never heard about it. Malefactors choose easy targets. They won’t lose time ad money trying to mess with Amazon, for example.
Another thing you should know is that it’s not just some hackers trying to do something solo. E-commerce frauds are executed by large criminal enterprises that have quite a lot of workforce and advanced tools at their disposal.
And since before and during holidays people make more purchases because they want to treat themselves and their loved ones, it’s a hot time for hackers.
How to protect your e-commerce site from hackers during holidays?
Every e-commerce website should implement anti-fraud measures not just during holidays. Here is what you can do to stay safe.
Choose reliable online payment methods
It’s easy for hackers to steal bank card details if an online store is using some unknown and questionable payment system. Google Pay, Stripe, and other widely-used systems protect the entered data and screen orders for fraud. If the payment is suspicious, they would usually either cancel or refuse to approve it.
Add a third-party tool for better security
While it’s not necessary, you can reinforce your protection with fraud prevention services. These are tools developed specifically to safeguard e-commerce websites from payment frauds and account takeover attacks. Some of these services even offer insurance or a guarantee that it will free you from any chargebacks if the fraud happens despite the protection installed.
Popular e-commerce platforms usually have anti-fraud addons in their stores. There are lots of fraud-control extensions for WooCommerce, for instance. And Magento 2 also offers some solutions for protection against payment and order manipulations.
Make users create reliable passwords
While a lot of frauds are executed through an unreliable payment system, there still is a huge risk that hackers will mess with you through user accounts. Since most people neglect the need to create complex combinations for passwords, it’s usually easy for malefactors to get into their accounts. If you require users to create strong combinations, you will protect them and yourself greatly because often accounts have payment or other sensitive data stored.
Don’t change the shipping address after the order is placed
Often fraudsters will try to steal the purchase by calling your online store and asking to ship the order to a different address. They could justify it by saying that they forgot they won’t reside at the address they’ve entered before, or by some other argument. Also, they might want to ask you to change the shipping carrier — in this case, they might have someone working for that carrier who would steal the order.
The worst thing is that a good customer really can forget they won’t be in time at the address they’ve entered. And they can ask you to change the carries for some reason. But how do you tell the genuine request from a fraud? It’s not an easy task. Moreover, it’s virtually impossible to determine whether the person is trying to trick you or not.
There is another way to handle this situation, and it’s quite simple. Just ask this person to place a new order. You could cancel the existing purchase yourself or ask a customer to cancel it. Then a person can enter the correct information when they place a new order. Easy as that. By doing so, you protect both yourself and a customer who could become a victim of malefactors.
As you can see, it’s not difficult to keep fraudsters away so that they don’t spoil holidays for you and your buyers. You just need to implement a couple of measures. And if you’re using King Servers servers and the automated anti-DDoS system, your site is already protected from viruses and DDoS attacks. Just make sure the hosting you’re using can handle the holiday traffic. If you’re not sure about it, don’t hesitate to contact us. We will review your online store and see if you need to expand the resources. Our VPS-hosting is highly scalable, so within just minutes, you’ll have a more advanced hosting at your service.
