With online commerce on a steep rise, the potential for luring customers through false online shops is also growing. Now, however, Switzerland’s national research and education network SWITCH is working with partners to make things harder for the perpetrators. A new tool will spot patterns in the way fraudulent web shops are set up and enable fast action to delete them.
During three months of operation, a total of 90,842 new Swiss domains ending with .ch were registered. Of these, 411 were identified as fraudulent and were subsequently deleted by SWITCH.
“We would be kidding ourselves if we thought online fraud could be eliminated entirely in Switzerland, especially when we consider how easily available .ch domain names are. Nevertheless, SWITCH will continue to do everything it can to combat such abuse,” says Jakob Dhondt, security expert at SWITCH.
Submitted by Morten Anderson
