BBB says online scams are more costly during coronavirus pandemic

Scams related to online purchases, already on the rise in 2019, spiked further following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research by the Better Business Bureau (BBB). A staggering 80.5 percent of consumers reporting online purchase scams in 2020 lost money. That figure has been creeping up from 71.2 percent in 2015, when BBB began collecting data.

Online purchase scams ranked among the top three riskiest scams for the past three years, according to the 2019 BBB Scam Tracker Risk Report that was published in March. Shortly after the report was released, COVID-19 shut down businesses, forcing people to socially distance and increase their online presence.

The organization measures fraud using the BBB Risk Index, a multidimensional approach to evaluating scam risk that considers three elements: exposure (prevalence of a scam type), susceptibility (the likelihood of losing money when exposed to a scam type) and monetary loss (the median dollar loss reported for a particular scam type).

With the coronavirus pandemic expected to continue for the foreseeable future and more people potentially being targeted by online scams, BBB launched a new study to better understand how online purchase scams happen, who is targeted, the overall impact of them and how BBB can help people avoid losing money while shopping online.

“This was something we had to examine more closely,” said Melissa Trumpower, executive director of BBB Institute for Marketplace Trust, which produced the report. “People will continue to actively shop online in order to reduce their exposure and keep their families safe. As this virus continues and circumstances change, scammers will try to take advantage.”

The “2020 Online Purchase Scams Report” examines findings from an August 2020 survey of 1,549 U.S. and Canadian consumers reporting online purchase scams to BBB Scam Tracker. The top reason people lost money to this type of scam was the enticement of a sales price. Scammers offered high-demand products at a significantly reduced dollar amounts, which then increased the desire to purchase the item.

Following the coronavirus outbreak, the second-biggest motivating factor to search and purchase items online was availability. Early in the pandemic, supplies such as hand sanitizer, toilet paper, cleaning products and masks were in short supply. According to the survey, more than half (53 percent) of the respondents said they weren’t aware they were a target of a scam until they didn’t receive the product they ordered.