Online Fraud

[Anchor Lead]

It's holiday season around the world, including Korea. But consumers need to exercise extra caution, as some shopping sites deceive customers by offering cheap products. Here's more.

[Pkg]

This Web site sells shoes from a French luxury brand. It advertises cheap prices by offering 90-percent discounts on products costing over one million won. This college student ordered luxury-brand shoes on this Web site.

[Soundbite] (Online shopping user(phone recording)) : "They advertised their products by offering Black Friday discounts of 85 percent. Unless you check the URL, you can easily take it for an official website. It looks exactly the same."

A text message that she received after paying for her purchase said that her payment had been made in the Chinese currency, whereas the price indicated on the Web site was in U.S. dollars. The Seoul Electronic Commerce Center has received 16 reports of fraud this week alone. That's even more than the number recorded over the past ten months. Usually only one or two online shopping sites are found to be fraudulent quarterly, but at the end of last year 50 such sites were uncovered in just one quarter. Perpetrators capitalize on the fact that various discount events are held during the year-end holiday shopping season.

[Soundbite] Lim Ju-kyung(Seoul Electronic Commerce Center) : "The biggest shopping season with its Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals is around the corner. Although there are few cases of fraud uncovered in the first three quarters of the year, their number surges in the fourth quarter."

Experts advise shoppers to check the URL of shopping sites and exercise extra caution when prices are excessively cheap. The Crossborder Transaction Consumer Portal run by the Korea Consumer Agency also offers information on dubious shopping sites.