How do we find fake webshops?

Let’s be honest, ordering things on the internet is awfully convenient. The choice you have is gigantic, and if you can wait a couple of days before you get your hands on whatever you ordered, you can get it delivered straight to your doorstep.

But if there’s one thing that any reasonable person is wary of, it’s ordering on the wrong online shop. Whether you’ve already been scammed or not, the idea of never receiving the object you paid for is of course an unsettling one.

This is why DNS Belgium has been on a tireless hunt for these fake webshops. Scouring the Belgian internet far and wide to find them and take them offline. Of course, with nearly 100 000 webshops registered on .be domain names, doing this by hand is nearly impossible. Which is why DNS Belgium uses algorithms to collect data, and verify which webshop might be fake, and which is real.

However, fake webshops are getting smarter and smarter about the tactics they use to trick people. Which means that our algorithms should get smarter as well, in order to find them.

Senne Batsleer did his advanced masters' thesis on the subject of finding fake webshops, which he did in collaboration with, and at, DNS Belgium. He developed a number of possible algorithms that could better track them down. In the video that you see above, Senne presents his research and his findings.

Want to know more about this subject? Read our full interview with him here.

Want to watch the video with subtitles? They are available in Dutch, French, or English. Click on “subtitles” to turn them on.