Cory Doctorow, a Californian creator, journalist, and activist, recently fell victim to a fake website scam after trying to find an area Thai restaurant’s website.
Doctorow intended to order takeout from Kiin, a preferred Burbank Thai restaurant in his neighborhood and proceeded to look for his or her website on Google.
Nevertheless, as a substitute of finding the official website, Doctorow stumbled upon a fake website that had been cleverly designed to look similar to the true one.
The fake website, which appeared as an ad at the highest of the Google search results, was registered under the domain name https://kiinthaila.com, which was by no means related to the true restaurant. The fake site even managed to position an order on behalf of Doctorow at the true restaurant, but with a markup of 15 percent.
Luckily, the staff at Kiin were quick to acknowledge the fraudulent activity and canceled the order placed through the fake website. They even called Doctorow to tell him of the situation, advising him to cancel his payment to the fake website through American Express.
Doctorow was shocked and outraged by the experience, questioning how the scammers were capable of obtain an Amex merchant account under the name “KIINTHAILA” without being detected.
“How the actual f**k did these obvious scammers get an Amex merchant account within the name of “KIINTHAILA” after supplying the phone number for a web site hosting company?” he asked.
“What’s Amex’s (know your customer) procedure? Do they even call the phone number?”
He also criticized Google Ads for accepting payments from scam artists for businesses that have already got a knowledge box (are recognized as the true thing) on Google’s search results page.
He argued that Amex, Google, and website hosting company Wix should have the opportunity to identify and stop these fraudulent activities.
“Google Knows what the true Kiin restaurant is, and yet they’re accepting payment to place a fake Kiin listing two slots above the true one,” he said.
Doctorow feared that there could also be countless other fake Wix web sites and Amex merchant accounts for real businesses, with Google Ads selling ads to those scammers for every one.
