Backstabber Report

How To Avoid Being Ripped Off By The Fake Chinese Retail Websites

GOOD INTENTIONS – BAD INFORMATION

This morning I was driving to work, listening to my favorite radio station (99.9 The Hawk) and favorite morning show, Michaels and Layne, when I heard Rick Michaels mention that fake Chinese websites are ripping people off.

It happens every year around Christmas. Thousands of websites are put up by Chinese, Russians, and Indians (among other Asian countries) that mimic the real retail websites of popular name brand items.

Now, before people start calling me a bigot, understand that these nationals are the most prevalent. There are plenty of other countries that has members of their population doing the same thing. The Asian countries are the most prevalent in the U.S. because they rarely have to answer for their actions and are the most difficult to shut down even when the legitimate retailer becomes aware of the fake site.

Getting back to Rick. I have a lot of respect for him, because I agree with his opinions on social issues and some commentary he has made in the side banter with his co-host, Samantha Layne. However, Rick told his listeners that a fake website can usually be recognized in two ways.

1. A contact email will often use a free email service (such as gmail, yahoo, and others).

2. If a website doesn’t have a secure url (seen as https:// instead of the unsecured http://) it is likely a ripoff site.

Though Rick is more intelligent than he leads people to believe, he really isn’t too Internet savvy.

I’ve called The Morning Show a couple of times when Internet or website information is discussed. Sometimes I feel like a P.I.T.A. trying to explain the workings of the Internet and what webmasters do to influence buying. When Rick mentioned these two ways to avoid being ripped off, I could only shake my head and decided rather than call again to correct him, I’d write an article and try to explain to people what they should really look for to avoid being ripped off by paying money to some Chinese programmer sitting in his kitchen.

First, only the idiot scammers use a free email service. Hostservers that provide the ability for a website to be displayed on your screen allow a webmaster to create an unlimited amount of emails that appear to be from the website. That is, if I had a website named ChanelNo5Perfumes.com I could create email addresses of my choosing using that domain name.

administrator@chanelno5perfumes.com

customer Service@chanelno5perfumes.com

sales@chanelno5perfumes.com

I would get my emails if you sent them to those addresses and you would get them from me, if I wanted to send them. They would appear as above in your email inbox. It is also just as easy to create a contact page that offers a box for submitting questions. It’s likely you won’t even see the email address your question is being sent to, as will be seen further below in this article.

Second, the use of “https://”, rather than “http://”

While Rick is correct that the lack of https is an excellent indicator that the website can’t be trusted, seeing an https url is no guarantee that the website is legitimate, either.

The security provided by an https url is a joke. The only security it offers is in the transmission of your personal data over the Internet, so that a third party cannot decode the information if they were to receive the encoded information during transmission (actually, with the proper program it can be decoded, but most aren’t that skilled). If the intended receiver is a crook, he receives the information decoded.

The https url is given to any webmaster that purchases an SSL certificate for his website. The cost is anywhere from $35 to $200, depending on who issues it. A code is given to the webmaster, who inserts it in the proper area of the script for his website and, voila, you have an https url. We webmasters know the system is truly BS, but customers feel a security seeing it, due to the hype, so even us honest webmasters install it on our websites.

SO HOW DO YOU RECOGNIZE FAKE WEBSITES?

Large retailers of those brand name items you are looking for rarely have a website devoted to individual products. That is, if you are looking for Air Jordan sneakers you don’t shop on the first website you find called “superairjordan.com,” or any other style name.

1) Go directly to the manufacturers website. In this case, Air Jordan is made by Nike. The Nike.com domain name won’t be owned by anyone other than Nike. Often, simply typing “nike.com” (or any manufacturer name) directly into your browser’s address bar will take you to the legitimate website. From the manufacturers website you will find links to legitimate retailers that carry their products. You may also find coupons or discount codes, if available.

2) Look for pages on the website that display new models or styles with a release date. Legitimate sites often display these as a cheap form of promotion and advertising.

3) Beware of sites offering huge discounts without some type of discount code or coupon. Rarely do legitimate manufacturers websites offer items for direct purchase at a reduced price without some way to track the sale. They also are not going to offer 50% – 80% off their most popular selling items.

4) Look for misspellings or poor syntax in English. As good as these foreign programmers are in duplicating code, they suck at proper English. The poor grammar and spelling is often found on sales pages, about us pages and other areas that try to convince you of their legitimacy. Remember that the true, huge corporations have sales people who proofread their website. They won’t let poor grammar and bad spelling be displayed to the public. The fake sites know that because most people don’t bother reading past the huge discount offer, they don’t put much effort in presenting other pages.

As an example, a fake website from China redirects the domain name, SuperAirJordan.com to the domain name 23AirJordansStore.com. Most people will not even notice the redirection, as they look at Air Jordan sneakers selling for about $69. The website looks fairly professional and even the “About Us” link presents a blurb in perfect English (it is a copy and paste job from a real retailing website). How many people will click the “Contact Us” link? Few, if any. Click that link and this is what you will find:

If you actually take the time to read that, you’ll see that some shoeless con artist didn’t put much effort into finding someone with a command of English and certainly, Nike wouldn’t allow a legitimate retailer to present their products in such a manner.

5) Click on links offered on the site. Click on them all. Many times fake sites will have broken links (going to a “page not found” error), links that are inactive (aren’t linked to anything and go nowhere), or links that send you to the order page (or a sales pitch for a different product) instead of where it was supposed to take you.

6) Learn To Use Whois.net

Whois.net is a free service that reveals where the registrar of the domain is physically located.

Simply go to Whois.net (not .com) and put the domain name in the appropriate box you will find offered there. Click the “Go” button and Whois will return the information.

In the example of SuperAirJordan.com, we find the following information given to us:

“Domain Name: SUPERAIRJORDAN.COM
Registrar: BEIJING INNOVATIVE LINKAGE TECHNOLOGY LTD. DBA DNS.COM.CN
Whois Server: whois.dns.com.cn
Referral URL: http://www.dns.com.cn
Name Server: NS1.CNSPEED.COM
Name Server: NS2.CNSPEED.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 18-apr-2010
Creation Date: 27-jul-2009
Expiration Date: 27-jul-2011″

Did you notice the “Registrar” information?

It is from Beijing. ‘Nuf said.

If we do a Whois on 23AirJordansStore.com, where the redirection sent us, we would find the Registrar is some company called Xin Net Technology Corporation. “Xin” should be enough to tell you it is Chinese, but doing a Google query on the company will reveal that it is a front for Chinese scam bootleggers.

CHECK YOUR BANK’S CREDIT CARD POLICY

No matter how well you do your research before ordering there is always the possibility you will still be swindled. Before ordering anything online you should ask your bank or credit card issuer what their policy is when it comes to CC fraud if you purchased something on the Internet. Some cards will stop the payment if it hasn’t been paid immediately, to investigate. Some will offer a maximum loss of $50 and they eat the rest. Some will do absolutely nothing to help you. Find out what your CC offers you in the way of protection from fraud. If it has nothing to offer, find another CC company.

I hope all this information helps those of you who have decided to go into debt for another year.

Me? I’m going the traditional route. I’m re-gifting all the crap I received last year that was produced in China. Including the “Rulex” watch I got from my ex-girlfriend.

Merry Chrishanakwanza and Happy Festivus.