China has recently been experiencing something professionals are referring to as an Ecommerce boom. Not only has online shopping soared in China, but they have also recently broken the world record in ecommerce sales in a single day.
The immense growth of online transactions does bear an unwanted aspect: cyber-attacks.
With large ecommerce growth, China has also experienced a 129% rise in Phishing schemes, in comparison to 2012. A total of 49,613 phishing schemes were thwarted by Chinese authorities between January and October 2013, according to the Anti-Phishing Alliance of China (APAC).
“Online Payments and financial securities are among the most common targets for the scams,” APAC added on the increasing threat to China’s online shoppers.
China, having the largest population in the world, also has the largest amount of internet connected people, with over 564 million people online. China’s Ecommerce growth is expected to exceed $2.93 trillion by 2015. A side effect of such growth is, unfortunately, an increase in online fraud and cyber-attacks. Due to the growth in phishing attacks and fraud attempts, Alibaba has recently blocked access to users who are referred to its site Taobao via social messaging and payment app WeChat, to help protect its users from falling victim.
Image courtesy of Flicker
