Fake UK Sites Continue To Trick Consumers

[engine]

Fake UK Sites Continue To Trick Consumers [news.bbc.co.uk]

Trading standards officers say that consumers are being tricked into buying fake goods on the internet by companies pretending to be based in the UK.The websites are often based in China, but use "co.uk" as part of their domain name, giving shoppers a false sense of security, they say.

It is thought that there could be as many as 480,000 websites which carry "co.uk", but which are not UK based.

I can't see this problem going away anytime soon. If anything, it has been getting worse, imho.

[Digmen1]

Wow, that's nearly half a million.
I wonder how many of them there are in the USA ?

[Leosghost]

Been saying loud and long for years ..here and to nominet ..( and getting berated for it here ) ..Nominet just dont reply ..
Possession of a .co.uk should be subject to being a UK citizen or resident in the UK or having an official UK registered ( at companies house ) business or UK registered sole trader etc etc ..

thats the way we do it in France ..keeps down the scammers on the .fr ( the authoritoes know which doors to knock on )..would do the same for the UK ..

but nominet are and always have been only interested in the money ..

[piatkow]

By the same token should .com be restricted to US nationals?

[Leosghost]

No ..nor should dot net or dot org they are generics ..no one ('cept yourself ..maybe ;)thinks that dot coms means United States company ..

But dot us is restricted ..as are .de .it etc etc ( you can get these but you must have a registered European business )..the UK only releases the dot co dot UK ..( the dot UK is kept for UK govt depts etc ..)

But it lets anyone anywhere have it ( the .co.uk ) from your granny in Bournemouth or Galway to "manuel" super hacker 12 years old from Paraguay or luc from North Vietnam ..and his credit card site ( had one of those post breifly here over the week end ..cards addesses , cvv's and passwords ) ..mostly US cards ..current ..

I run my own UK limited companies ..I dont own a single dot co dot UK ..because they have no cred in the business world ..because any business knows that anyone can get one ..even Nigerian princes ..

I do own .coms, .nets.and .orgs and .fr versions of my companies names and trading site names ..and have European wide trademarks registered on them ..

The .co.uk rules are sloppy and a fraudsters paradise wether the fraudster is in the UK or anywhere else in the world ..

[MrHard]

Were not getting tricked into buying fake goods. We want to buy them.

Manufacturers of designer goods have plenty of their own fake issues. Is a sneaker made in China and shipped to US stores by a brand name fake? Or, is it real? Oh, I get it it's only fake when it ships directly from China.

What China is doing it some cases is just cutting out the middle man. It's all about perception. If the same item came in a fancy box it would be difficult to know the difference, except for the hyped cases where it was a really bad quality fake.

[Leosghost]

We

qui?

[jackgordon]

By the same token should .com be restricted to US nationals?

I wouldn't agree with this at all... .Com domains aren't associated with purely USA based websites.

If you had said .US domains should be restricted, then yes I would agree.

I myself have nearly been duped into buying from one of these websites when searching for a laptop battery. They are very misleading with offers of special delivery and so on - they even have UK telephone numbers diverted to China etc. and I consider myself to be pretty savvy and technically minded.

I also think that only certain sectors are affected badly - often electronics and similar goods such as iPods and mobile phones.

[marina330]

.com is short for commerce with no geographical restrictions.