Online store fraud reports quadruple in past four years

The number of online store fraud reports has risen by 446 percent since 2018, according to the National Hotline for Internet Scams (LMIO).

Four years ago, the number of online store fraud reports was just under four thousand. At the start of the pandemic, with a boom in online stores, web store scams shot up to nearly twelve thousand. "In 2020 and 2021, we see an increase in declarations regarding online stores. We think this has to do with the coronavirus crisis. Tclosedops were close, people started to buy more online, so there was also more fraud," team leader at LMIO, Gijs van der Linden, told Kassa.

In 2021, there were 17,554 web-store fraud reports.

As soon as shopping was possible again on-site, internet scams began to sink again.

On the police website, consumers can check if a website has been reported as fraudulent in the past.

Not only web store fraud cases have been on the rise since the start of the pandemic, but also dating site fraudsters have become more sophisticated.