A victim of payment fraud: Yin's story

KVK Editors
Background
Edited 9 August 2024
1 min
Managing and growing
Secure business

If all or part of your business is digital, a cyber incident could paralyse it. For fraudsters and hackers, it does not matter if your business is big or small. They are after your wallet.

Cybercriminals are always lurking about, no matter how small your business is. Research shows that one in five entrepreneurs face a cyber incident every year. This is how online fraud happened to Yin*.

What happens?

Yin is a 21-year-old student and a part-time entrepreneur. In addition to pursuing her studies, she has recently started running an online shop. She sells Chinese lifestyle products. Things are going well, and she is getting more and more orders. Suddenly, she notices that money is no longer coming into her account, even though customers have paid. She discovers that the payment process has been hacked and that her account number has been changed. The money her customers have paid is now ending up in a criminal’s account.

What does Yin do?

Since she does not know how to solve this problem immediately, Yin takes her website offline. She then delves into cybersecurity. She gains a better understanding of the risks of running an online shop. She reads up on various types of fraud.

Payment fraud

Yin learns ways to best protect her business from payment fraud. She finds out that hackers were able to hack her payment process because she used an insecure tool to build her online shop.

Online shop fraud

You can also fall victim to online shop fraud if you have an online shop. This means that a fake online shop uses your name to scam customers. Yin sets a Google alert for her company name. That way, she can keep an eye out for use of her name online.

Parcel fraud

Yin finds out about something called parcel fraud, where your customer claims they have not received your package. She decides to send her parcels by registered mail from now on to prevent this kind of fraud.

What can she do next?

With what she now knows about online fraud, Yin restarts her online shop. This time, she is alert to the risks. She now knows how to safely approach her customers here, and her suppliers in China, and manage her online business properly. That allows Yin to resume business with her mind at ease.

*Yin's story is fictional but it is based on actual events.