Eight brand protection and cybersecurity agencies (Brandit, globaleyez, GCS-Risk, Group-IB, LdotR, Onsist, Pointer Brand Protection and REACT) have joined forces with Scamadviser, an initiative of the Ecommerce Foundation, to fight online counterfeits faster.

Fighting Fakes Faster

Now, taking down a website which is infringing on intellectual property rights of brands like Asics, G-Star or Hugo Boss, may take days up to months. For some online stores it is nearly impossible to find the registry, registrar or hosting company willing to let the website seize operations in a reasonable amount of time.

Scamadviser.com has as goal to give scammers less opportunity to continue their malpractice while legal action is taken. The website is used by more than 2.5 million consumers a month to check if a website is legit or a possible scam, phishing site or online store selling fake products. Scamadviser’s blacklist is also used by several social media and advertising platforms to check links to third party sites before being published.

Building a global blacklist

Participating brand protection agencies provide infringing domain names directly to Scamadviser via excel or API. New infringements are directly communicated to social media and advertising platforms to take the opportunity away from scammers to sell counterfeits.

Jorij Abraham, general manager of the Ecommerce Foundation wants to develop Scamadviser into the global blacklist for anything being a scam: “We continuously improve Scamadviser’s algorithm to identify online scams. With the domain names provided by brands and brand protection agencies, we cannot only warn consumers about the websites provided but also identify other shady websites that have comparable markers. One manually identified site selling counterfeit products may reduce the Scamadviser trust score of hundreds of other websites.”  

The Ecommerce Foundation hopes that more brands and brand protection agencies will join as there are no costs involved. Conversation are already underway with several registries, registrars, hosting companies, payment service providers and police forces to join the initiative to build a global blacklist of scams.