Ask HN: Where to Report Scam Webshops?

[pajko]

Might have found a bunch of suspiciously similar-looking and very possibly fake webshops in a scam network, or at least I don't think this many unrelated brands would end up using the same outlet provider. Couldn't find any contact info, the shipping info and privacy policies are bullshit, the prices are suspiciously low, the wording is strange on every site and no Hungarian would start every word in uppercase (unless they are braindead). Some sites are just redirects to others, and quite a lot of them has intentional typo. For example, www.salonomnhuoutlet.com and www.salomohungary.com

Reported this at https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/ but it seems like the sites are not yet flagged as https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search shows the sites as safe. Is there any way to get these sites off the net?

The list: https://bgp.tools/prefix/196.245.161.0/24#dns

Don't know what that cprapid.com is, but it's on the Badware Risks filter list.

Btw, at least for me, the top 3 results for "salomon xa pro 3d" are these scammy-looking sites.

I've found an article about this phenomenon too: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/security/521539-surge-in-online-shopping-scams-in-south-africa.html

[FrenchDevRemote]

Google does not give a damn, I reported multiple fake sites posing as famous brands on youtube ads they didn't do anything and rejected the reports.

Contact the registrar and hosting services.

[ddgflorida → FrenchDevRemote]

They do care though if you express an opinion they don't like.

[explosion-s → FrenchDevRemote]

Yeah and then they blocked my domain automatically just because I used the subdomain "Spotify" once

[autoexec]

Use whois to find out which company is hosting the domain and for good measure, ping the sites and use whois on the IPs you get back to see which networks they're being served from, then contact those ISPs

Fake storefronts can be served from compromised devices (often using a residential IP address) so reporting those will get them cleaned up/secured and while most hosting companies don't have much to fear from managing a scammer's domain/DNS (nobody blacklists godaddy or namecheap and they know it) hosting scammers on your network is much worse since you risk getting your IP space blacklisted (unless you're google or cloudflare) so sometimes it's easier to get the sites removed by going after the networks involved, although that can also turn into a game of Whac-A-Mole since the scammers will often just point their domain to a new IP.

[ForOldHack → autoexec]

Of the last 2000 or so I reported to Facebook, they all disappeared in a day, only to pop back up with the same scam, literally the next day. Meta may be using AI for something, but finding scammers who pay them good money to scam is not a priority. I recently found a popular website duplicated with a .sk domain. Total scam.

[chippyty → ForOldHack]

Report to facebook for?

Facebook has no authority in this, except to remove them from their contents. Facebook has instead a board of greedy people who want to maximize their income, regardless.

[galleywest200]

If you believe a site is actually running a scam then look at who hosts the domain and report it to them (NameCheap, GoDaddy, etc).

Orgs like AWS will take down scam websites, and send you a little email that you can save as a trophy.

[is_true → galleywest200]

I tried with a bunch of sites hosted on azure and they are still running.

[redrove → galleywest200]

I tried doing this recently for a number of spam and phishing websites and all registrars/hosts refused my complaint on the basis that it’s unfounded.

And yet valid businesses are booted out and deplatformed every day.

This is such utter failure at scale.

[forinti → galleywest200]

I tried reporting a phishing site to DO recently and I was quite disappointed at the response.

With regards to AWS, I have most of their IPs blocked because so many attacks come from there.

[coin]

What is a “webshop”?

[ForOldHack → coin]

A web commerce site.