62 million users duped by internet shopping cheats
Almost one out of three online shoppers in the mainland have been tricked by fake websites over the past year, at a cost of the more than HK$36 billion
Nearly one-third of online shoppers in the mainland were cheated an average of about 500 yuan in the past year, a Xinhua report said yesterday.
Internet fraud cost more than 60 million mainland internet users 30 billion yuan (HK$36.7 billion) in the past year, and may become a major impediment for further expansion of online retail businesses, Xinhua said.
Citing China Electronic Commerce Association figures, the report said that of the 194 million people who shopped online in the past year, nearly 62 million had been cheated. The losses were estimated to exceed 30.8 billion yuan.
Most fraudulent websites cheated customers through selling fake products or making false advertisements. They paid search engines to have a higher rank on search results, or used similar web addresses to real brands to fool consumers.
Professor Chai Yueting, at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said the nation's website verification services were still in their infancy despite the boom in online shopping, exposing those customers to a high level of risk.
"The industry is highly competitive with numerous participants providing all kinds of services, but there are still no national standards at this stage," he told Xinhua.
Internet fraud has been on the rise since 2010, said Xiao Nan, a police officer in Jilin province who has investigated online scams for the past six years.