How to buySAFE on the Internet

(Courtesy of buySAFE)

The Center for American Progress and the Center for Democracy and Technology recently released a report concluding that not enough is being done to protect the public from fraud on the Internet. "If problems such as malware, phishing, and spam are left unchecked, many consumers may lose trust and abandon e-commerce," according to the report.

What if a shopper could safely enjoy the convenience, lower prices and choices offered by the world of e-commerce, while avoiding all the fraud lurking on the Internet free?

In 2006, buySAFE entered the e-commerce scene with a unique concept, giving sellers the ability to become bonded and display the buySAFE seal on their site. Once a seller is bonded, the purchase is guaranteed up to $25,000.

The buySAFE guarantee covers virtually any loss that might occur during an online shopping transaction. This includes, but isn't necessarily limited to fraud, phishing and financial misdeeds.

Last month, they grew their concept with the buySAFE Shopping Advisor, which is a free software tool that rates the safety/security of all sites within a search term. The tool also points to sites sites with the buySAFE seal, which guarantees the transaction.

Shopping Advisor leverages buySAFE’s advanced technology and bonded merchant customer base to provide a fully closed-loop safe shopping experience. "There is nothing else like it in the world as it provides comprehensive safe shopping for consumers from search through purchase and beyond – guaranteed," according to Jeff Grass, buySAFE's CEO.

While buySAFE offers a free service to the e-consumer, they aren't in business to lose money. Some of the due diligence performed on every bonded merchant includes ensuring they have a SSL certificate and a privacy policy describing how they protect personal information. Additionally, bonded sellers are required to allow buySAFE access to inspect their business anytime they choose to do so.

Shopping Advisor provides a tool to analyze e-commerce sites and provides a safe shopping portal, which consists of bonded sellers, only. Once in the safe shopping portal every purchase is guaranteed within the limits of the bond buySAFE provides.

Shopping Advisor uses buySAFE's proprietary website inspection and assessment technology to analyze almost 100 different safety/security attributes of an e-commerce site. It then provides objective ratings on the site when searching with Google, Yahoo and MSN (Firefox is on the way). This allows the shopper to make an informed decision before forking over their hard-earned cash.

Within the Shopping Advisor tool is the Safe Shopping Portal providing alternative product choices from thousands of merchants that are protected with the buySAFE seal. It is within the Safe Shopping Portal that every purchase is guaranteed with a Bond of up to $25,000 and it's protected against identity theft, also.

Essentially, Shopping Advisor shows all the shopping opportunities for the search term listed, rates the sites in question and then gives the consumer the ability to make an informed buying decision. If the buyer chooses to buy a product via the Safe Shopping Portal, it is automatically guaranteed and the transaction is protected against identity theft for 30 days. When the buyer purchases an item from the Safe Shopping Portal, they automatically receive an e-mail with the specifics on the guarantee for their personal records.

buySAFE offers a lot of benefits to sellers, also. The biggest is which is what ensures any successful business, or the trust of it's customers. They've also added a cost-per-sale pricing model that has received positive feedback from the merchants using it. If a merchant needs more information on this, I'll refer them to Jeff Grass' blog, or the press release on this matter.

According to most if not all of the reports out there, Internet crime continues to grow and become more sophisticated. Saying that, no matter how sophisticated it becomes the primary motivation to commit cybercrime is money. This rings true from the most simple social engineering scheme to most sophisticated attacks using crimeware. What buySAFE has done is remove this primary motivator from the mix, or at least made it a lot less attractive to Internet fraudsters, charlatans and tricksters.

Shopping Advisor takes this concept to the next level by providing the consumer with a tool to make an educated shopping decision without falling prey to the pitfalls of a too good be true come-on. Too good to be true lures are the common theme Internet fraudsters, charlatans and tricksters use to snare their prey. In other words, Shopping Advisor is a tool a consumer can effectively use to practice the principle known as caveat emptor, or buyer beware.

buySAFE is also offering a shopper referral program. They pay $1.00 for every user referred to Shopping Advisor. This is a great fundraiser opportunity for charities, sports leagues, churches or any good cause.

Lawyers conned in job scam on CraigsList

Quite often, fraud victims don't want to go public with what happened to them. In my limited experience, this can be especially true -- when dealing with victims -- who hold prestigious credentials.

Fortunately, not all of them remain silent, and by speaking out, they protect others from becoming victims of the same thing that happened to them.

Here is a story by Arin Greenwood, an attorney -- who was the victim of what seems to be one of the more sophisticated job scams -- I've read about:

This is the story in which you learn how a graduate of Columbia Law School—that’s me—and almost 80 other people, who really should have known better, got suckered into giving away all our personal details as well as up to two months of our lives for “jobs” that never actually existed. And then you learn why it all happened the way it did.

How I Got Involved With The Scam

An intriguing Craigslist job ad turned up on June 21 of this year at a time when I was feeling particularly bleak. I had spent the better part of that morning losing at online Scrabble and wondering if I had enough money to get a small falafel for lunch.

Apparently -- Arin wasn't the only highly educated person taken in on this pretty elaborate job scam, which originated, where a lot of job scams do -- on Craigslist:

This lack of information was disquieting, but the Global Speculator team was reassuring: lawyers, researchers, writers, computer programmers, designers, administrators, executive assistants, and the one mathematician named Kermit, some of whom had been working since early June, when I first saw the Craigslist ad. And I trusted the wisdom of the group: There were almost 80 people working on this project. That is a lot of people, too many for everyone to be as silly and desperate as me. Surely someone in the group had a good reason to be there, and I thought I’d ride along on their coattails. Plus, one of my new co-workers was, it turned out, someone I’d worked with on Saipan, and I marveled at this reassuring coincidence; I knew this guy was smart, and if he was willing to believe that this was a legitimate enterprise then perhaps it really was. Unfortunately, I think he might have applied some of that reasoning to me.

In the end, no one is really certain what the intent was in committing this scam. If anyone wants to speculate, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

One of the speculations made from several of the people (who were scammed) was that this was part of an elaborate fraudulent investment scheme.

Arin Greenwood's story (courtesy of the Washington City Paper), here.

Michael Webster -- a noted attorney in Toronto, I've written about in the past -- writes about the importance of performing due diligence when making an investment. In this case, the people scammed certainly invested a lot of their expert time.

He has a very interesting and educational website that covers "due diligence," which I highly recommend reading.

Investment scams can be highly complex and the scammers can often appear to be pretty influential. Right now -- there is a lot of furor, over a person by the name of Norman Hsu -- who allegedly ran some pretty high dollar investment scams. The reason for all the furor is Mr. Hsu was making large political contributions to certain candidates.

Michael wrote an interesting article about the Norman Hsu phenomenon, here.

On a closing note, Arin should be commended for writing about what happened to her. Too many victims of fraud would prefer not to say anything about it -- and when they don't -- they make it easier for the fraudsters behind the schemes to continue victimizing people.

Awareness and communication are the probably the most effective tool against fraud.

Job scams are becoming more and more common, another good resource to learn more about this problem is at the World Privacy Forum's job scam page.

If you own a small business it pays to be aware of scams and exercise due diligence

Individuals and eBay warriors aren't the only people being targeted by advance fee and overpayment scams. Businesses, especially smaller ones, are now suffering losses with ever increasing frequency.

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners noted in their last report to the nation that small businesses suffer "disproportionate fraud losses," when they become a fraud victim.

Part of the reason for this is large businesses employ people to deal with fraud. The other part of the reason is they can't afford the exposure (as well as) larger businesses can.

Report, here.

Rich Mintzer (Entrepreneur.com) did a pretty detailed article in January about how small business is targeted by fraudsters. He has some smart tips for business owners:

Smart Tip: Don’t ship any products to a buyer on a pre-paid basis unless you’ve done business with the company previously or can verify the legitimacy of its payment method.

Smart Tip: It’s better to be safe than sorry. Never send products or refunds to a first-time buyer until their check has cleared the bank.

Smart Tip: The bottom line is, if you haven’t seen a directory before and can’t verify that it’s actually distributed, you’d be wise to steer clear of any such offers.

Smart Tip: If it’s the vending machine business you’re interested in, do your own homework and contact companies you’ve done your research on. And be leery of local ads for new vendors that offer a toll-free number and a chance to make "big bucks."

Rich's tips (with more detail), here.

Michael Webster, an attorney practicing in Toronto, has an excellent site, which educates all of us on business scams:

Misleading Advertising Law (Due Diligence for Income Earning Opportunities).

A little awareness and (due diligence) can stop most fraud dead in it's tracks!