Extortion in the World of eCommerce

By Adam  |  30 Aug 2015 16:00:00

The internet, as I am sure you know, can be a dangerous place. Malicious people use it for identity theft, scams and to just outright take people's money. It's not uncommon for groups to threaten to take down a website (usually through flooding it with traffic) unless they pay them off. So much like a physical shop on the street runs the risk of somebody coming in and robbing the place, your eCommerce website has the risk of online criminals coming along and trying to extort you.

 

You might think to yourself "Sure, it would be annoying if they were able to take my site down for a bit, but, really, what harm does it do?" and let me answer that question for you. Firstly, if somebody comes to your website while it is down and are hoping to make a purchase right away (perhaps knowing exactly what they want), if your website is down when they arrive, they'll probably just head to another website to make their purchase. Maybe they'll like it there and then always use that other site in future? That's not to mention that, if something like this happens, people may begin to question your security; though it almost certainly will not be the case, they'll probably assume they might risk losing their private information if they use your business and therefore never do so again.

 

So maybe you don't want to give in to these people because you don't want to encourage their criminal actions and that's fair enough. You might want to report them, but, sadly, that will be especially hard to do or, equally, you might want to do nothing (if you don't consider them a real threat), but you can also protect yourself from them with a service called Akamai. Not only will they help you to ensure that your website is performing as optimally as possible, but that you are extra secure against threats like those described in this post. Don't forget that as more people begin to discover your website, that does include criminals. So that's something you might like to look into, if you are worried about the safety of your eCommerce website. But if you don't even have an eCommerce website yet, sign up to Sellr and create one now for no cost at all!

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About the Authors

Adam
RomanCart Content Expert
Simon
Ecommerce Expert
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