Online Fraud – What is Reputational Hijacking?

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Online scams take on new forms every day. The latest in a string of scams include reputational hijacking.

We spoke to Cape Town Attorney, Farouk Mowzer, about some of these online scams sites.

According to Farouk Mowzer, online fraud is indeed a big thing. It's relatively easy to set up a fake website that purports to be well-meaning and providing independent reviews, but what if that review is intentionally false?

According to industry specialists, a number of websites have popped up in the past year that offer independent reviews and listings of scammers. These sites, however, are totally devoid of actual facts, trawl the internet for unrelated information and pop up the data as "reports". Conveniently, these sites have no real contact details that will lead you to be able to take the content offline.

Type in the website name and remove though and you quickly find a paid for service at $1000 that guarantees removal, effectively, online blackmail. The sites are owned by the same persons and operated from Eastern European syndicate bases. Traditional Google activities to remove the fraud don't work, according to Mowzer.


The correct solution to these problems is logically to complain to google and force the delisting of the offensive website. In the minefield that is Google, however, this is easier said than done and in most cases those affected revert to waiting for time to pass until the site is organically removed through preferential search results. Faroque Mowzer says that this type of fraud is growing in prevalence in South Africa as emerging companies become more aware of reputation.

He cautions companies to keep close track of their online reputation and consult a specialist when in doubt.

Want to learn more about online fraud? Feel free to contact our OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) Department on 021 110 0422 or email contact@osint.co.za. Alternatively, you can visit www.osint.co.za to learn more about our OSINT services.

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