Overview
Nowadays, the risk of falling victim to online intellectual property infringement and other types of cybercrimes has
increased exponentially.
There are not any online resource to let users know whether a website is a counterfeit-related web or not.
If you are a user considering to purchase something in an e-commerce website,
Desenmascara.me will let you know whether such website is a
counterfeit-related web or
not. Also if you are a brand, you could get ahead of all the counterfeiters targeting your brand just
receiving the most accurate and unique counterfeit-related intelligence about your brand
Desenmascara.me uses different data patterns to
detect all kind of websites selling wear, sunglasses or jewelry of the most popular brands targeted by counterfeit. When someone uses
desenmascara.me to know more about a website and then the website scanned does match with these data patterns then
the website will be automatically classified as 'No official' and a twitter to the pertinent brand will be published to alert them and take action over the site in case needed.
If you are a brand who is being notified with this alerts and you do not want them published, please let me know and I will remove you as soon as possible. Instead you may want to receive them by email
Index
Why are you doing this?
After writing the
Tracking online counterfeiters research paper, I become fascinated by this online fraud and its intersection with the
web site security topic I was specialized at the time. I started to focus all the detection capabilities of this online tool to detect counterfeit-related websites and similar frauds. I am still amazed by the amount of fraud I am observing therefore I keep improving this tool as I discover new tactics and indicators of online counterfeiters.
(Desenmascarame is a Spanish verb to say: unmask me or show me what is behind the scenes)
If you are a brand who is being notified with this alerts and you do not want them published, please let me know and I will remove you as soon as possible
How is a website verified as no official?
Surprisingly I had more than 2k no official websites from all kinds of brands, mainly luxury brands, in the database. I performed research on all the metadata patterns (related posts in Spanish) [1] [2] [3] y [4] and then I implemented the feature during some time with manual review to fix potential issues, and after a while I left the system in autonomous mode doing the classification.
What can I do if my site is flagged as no official?
Obviously the system might have some issues, if a website has been classified wrongly as no official and you are the owner
of the website in good standing, as soon as you report it the no official label will be removed.
Can I report a site as Official?
Yes. But you have to proof you are the owner of the domain you want to validate by sending the request from a domain of the same domain you want to verify. If you have no mail configured we can do another methods as having available a flag file in your webserver in order to verify it.
Once this process is finished the website will be categorized as Official.
To whom it benefits?
There are 2 clear goals with this anti-counterfeit feature:
- Users:
- To know whether a website is official or not in order to not be fooled
- Brands:
- To collect all the no official websites targeting them and act over it.
Have you received any comment from any of the brands being alerted?
Yes, so far I have received good feedback from
RayBan and
Abercrombie.
You can check it out
here
Is this for free?
It is for free for users - so they have the opportunity to query any website prior to make any purchase. They could know whether the website is a counterfeit-related or not. In the other hand, all the intelligence collected by users and through other different means could be quite valuable for the affected brands, therefore there is an
enterprise service available.
Is not the interface a bit ugly?
Yes, it is :) sorry I am not a designer so I focus on the core implementation of the service. If you are a fantastic
web designer and you have great ideas to improve the look and feel of this service
I will be excited to hear from you.
What are the brands more targeted by the online counterfeiters?
I had no idea and I did not find such as details neither. Therefore by working with this feature and testing it during around 4 weeks I collected some numbers
and I published them in a small article titled "
Top 10 brands more targeted by the online counterfeiters."
Miscellaneous resources related with fraudulent websites
Fintech related
CNMV Warnings (unauthorised firms and other entities)
Counterfeit related
Report Counterfeit Goods to Google
Check your RWC 2015 ticketing source is official
Designer Bag Authentication Services
StopFake Louboutin
Luxottica
Barbour counterfeit education
GHD website checker
The North Face partners
UGG
Sport fans
National IPR Coordination Center Referral (US)
Report Fake Goods (US)
Research project studying cease and desist letters concerning online content
Disclaimer
Desenmascara.me is not held responsible on the accuracy of the classification. Results are provided at the best current knowledge and we are constantly improving the accuracy on the detection.
We act on any feedback received about any result. We will review it manually and will provide an answer as soon as possible.
If you have any more inquiry in relation to this service please contact with me through the
contact form.
Many thanks.
