SIDN got taken down 4,340 fake webshops in 2019

SIDN, working in tandem with the .nl registrars and other partners, got 4,340 fake webshops taken down, which are detected by new self-teaching tools.

SIDN is trying to get scams stopped as early as possible by scanning continuously .nl websites for characteristics associated with the fraud. Most of the websites that are taken down now were detected by new self- teaching tools developed by SIDN labs. These tools are mainly checking the domain registration time and the email address used for the registration. With more data gathered, the profiling characteristics are constantly refined and the toolset eventually teaches itself how to recognize fake ones.

Self-teaching toolset developed by SIDN Labs

Before taking down, webshops are flagged as suspicious and analyzed by SIDN personnel. 79.3% of the websites examined in September and December were confirmed as fakes. Thymen Wabeke, Research Engineer at SIDN Labs said,

“A while back, for example, fake webshops typically used long page titles that included multiple luxury brand names. However, as soon as the crooks realized that long titles were one of the things our detection tool was looking for, they stopped using them. The timing is significant because a high proportion of fake webshops are registered during Chinese office hours. The re-registration of used domain names is another popular tactic with scammers. If a domain name is dropped by its user, it can be re-registered by someone else after forty days. And more than half of suspect domains turn out to have been re-registered as soon as the forty days were up.”