8 ms·

I don't understand how the imprints on websites help with scams. Could you elaborate? If someone is scamming people, it wouldn't be too surprising if they do i

I don't understand how the imprints on websites help with scams. Could you elaborate? If someone is scamming people, it wouldn't be too surprising if they do include the imprint or include incorrect data there, wouldn't it?

cookiengineer 5y ago
> I don't understand how the imprints on websites help with scams. Could you elaborate? In imprints there's an address that you can lookup on the Handelsregister. If the HRB matches, and the Handelsregister's Domain for the company matches, too... it's usually an indicator that the website is trustworthy (at least from a legal sue-able-in-case-of-fraud standpoint). Example (never used the website before): - https://www.deerberg.de/service/impressum https://www.deerberg.de/service/impressum - Northdata.de entry checks out (public webservice of Handelsregister entries), with same domain(s) - unternehmen24.info checks out (another public webservice of Handelsregister entries), with same domain(s) - HRB checks out, it's in Lueneburg - DNS records and whois point out it's locally hosted in Lueneburg, too. - Googled Umsatzsteuer-ID, no other (unrelated, scammy looking domain) results - Googled HRB, checks out as well - Google Business Page on Google Maps checks out as well (which might be hijacked, so not trustworthy as indicator alone) - Geschaeftsfuehrer check out as well So yeah, I guess this page/company is legit. You could do this further with LinkedIn and other things like looking up phone numbers in Breaches/Leaks and match the records with the Handelsregister. From an automation perspective this is still a lot of manual research that's necessary; and I guess that this is kind of the real issue at hand - that most people are too lazy to do this sort of background check before they buy something online. But I guess depending on the financial value you're willing to spend some background check beforehand makes more sense if a fraud would financially burden your means of survival afterwards.
- logifail 5y ago
  > that most people are too lazy to do this sort of background check before they buy something online To be honest that does seem like an awful lot of detective work especially if this would be for a simple online purchase, particularly if the transaction value isn't that high. In many countries you would typically pay online using a credit card or Paypal in which case the card issuer/bank/Paypal provides you with a degree of protection if a product doesn't turn up or isn't what you ordered. In Germany I believe people still are used to there being the option to pay using "Vorkasse" (paying in advance, by bank transfer). I've simply never understood why any buyer would want to assume all the risk by doing that.
  - Cu3PO42 5y ago
    Another popular payment option is to pay by invoice. Obviously this means the merchant assumes (almost) all the risk. Hence this option is not available most of the time. As for the question why people would choose to pay in advance? From my experience it was because they didn't have a credit card and didn't trust/didn't want to have a business relationship with PayPal, leaving Vorkasse as the only available payment option. Another point that has been brought up was the perception that the bank transfer would be more secure, as in "if they have my credit card info/PayPal account, they can just charge me at any time". The fact that bank account information also enables you to debit the account is curiously often forgotten. Is this a particular sensible position to take? Maybe not, but not everyone acts sensibly all the time.
    - charsi 5y ago
      Lots of websites in India also offer payment via bank account, including amazon.in. The benefit from my POV was the same as you describe. I don't want random websites to have my credit card info and I don't want to deal with paypal. Paying by bank account doesn't mean handing over bank account info. But the merchant just redirects to your bank as part of the payment flow. The bank knows how much money the merchant wants and you authorize it for that one transaction. Bank redirects back to the merchant who confirms the payment was successful. They can't make any further charges at a later date.
      - logifail 5y ago
        > Paying by bank account doesn't mean handing over bank account info Tell that to the people behind the "Sofortüberweisung" [ roughly: "Immediate bank transfer"] scheme - run by Sofort GmbH, now part of Klarna. I've seen this offered several times but never (dared to) try it personally, but by all accounts* it works something like this: At the merchant's checkout page you are offered choice of payment methods, Sofortüberweisung is on the list, you select it, then you end up on a third-party site(!) where you provide the login details to your bank account(!!) including PIN and/or one-time TAN(!!!). The third party site checks your balance, then executes a transfer to the merchant for the total of your cart, then confirms the transaction to the merchant. When I first read about how this works, I assumed I'd understood it wrong. From a security PoV, doesn't this make one's skin crawl? * sorry, pun intended ;)

cookiengineer 5y ago

> I don't understand how the imprints on websites help with scams. Could you elaborate? In imprints there's an address that you can lookup on the Handelsregister. If the HRB matches, and the Handelsregister's Domain for the company matches, too... it's usually an indicator that the website is trustworthy (at least from a legal sue-able-in-case-of-fraud standpoint). Example (never used the website before): - https://www.deerberg.de/service/impressum https://www.deerberg.de/service/impressum - Northdata.de entry checks out (public webservice of Handelsregister entries), with same domain(s) - unternehmen24.info checks out (another public webservice of Handelsregister entries), with same domain(s) - HRB checks out, it's in Lueneburg - DNS records and whois point out it's locally hosted in Lueneburg, too. - Googled Umsatzsteuer-ID, no other (unrelated, scammy looking domain) results - Googled HRB, checks out as well - Google Business Page on Google Maps checks out as well (which might be hijacked, so not trustworthy as indicator alone) - Geschaeftsfuehrer check out as well So yeah, I guess this page/company is legit. You could do this further with LinkedIn and other things like looking up phone numbers in Breaches/Leaks and match the records with the Handelsregister. From an automation perspective this is still a lot of manual research that's necessary; and I guess that this is kind of the real issue at hand - that most people are too lazy to do this sort of background check before they buy something online. But I guess depending on the financial value you're willing to spend some background check beforehand makes more sense if a fraud would financially burden your means of survival afterwards.

logifail 5y ago
> that most people are too lazy to do this sort of background check before they buy something online To be honest that does seem like an awful lot of detective work especially if this would be for a simple online purchase, particularly if the transaction value isn't that high. In many countries you would typically pay online using a credit card or Paypal in which case the card issuer/bank/Paypal provides you with a degree of protection if a product doesn't turn up or isn't what you ordered. In Germany I believe people still are used to there being the option to pay using "Vorkasse" (paying in advance, by bank transfer). I've simply never understood why any buyer would want to assume all the risk by doing that.
- Cu3PO42 5y ago
  Another popular payment option is to pay by invoice. Obviously this means the merchant assumes (almost) all the risk. Hence this option is not available most of the time. As for the question why people would choose to pay in advance? From my experience it was because they didn't have a credit card and didn't trust/didn't want to have a business relationship with PayPal, leaving Vorkasse as the only available payment option. Another point that has been brought up was the perception that the bank transfer would be more secure, as in "if they have my credit card info/PayPal account, they can just charge me at any time". The fact that bank account information also enables you to debit the account is curiously often forgotten. Is this a particular sensible position to take? Maybe not, but not everyone acts sensibly all the time.
  - charsi 5y ago
    Lots of websites in India also offer payment via bank account, including amazon.in. The benefit from my POV was the same as you describe. I don't want random websites to have my credit card info and I don't want to deal with paypal. Paying by bank account doesn't mean handing over bank account info. But the merchant just redirects to your bank as part of the payment flow. The bank knows how much money the merchant wants and you authorize it for that one transaction. Bank redirects back to the merchant who confirms the payment was successful. They can't make any further charges at a later date.
    - logifail 5y ago
      > Paying by bank account doesn't mean handing over bank account info Tell that to the people behind the "Sofortüberweisung" [ roughly: "Immediate bank transfer"] scheme - run by Sofort GmbH, now part of Klarna. I've seen this offered several times but never (dared to) try it personally, but by all accounts* it works something like this: At the merchant's checkout page you are offered choice of payment methods, Sofortüberweisung is on the list, you select it, then you end up on a third-party site(!) where you provide the login details to your bank account(!!) including PIN and/or one-time TAN(!!!). The third party site checks your balance, then executes a transfer to the merchant for the total of your cart, then confirms the transaction to the merchant. When I first read about how this works, I assumed I'd understood it wrong. From a security PoV, doesn't this make one's skin crawl? * sorry, pun intended ;)