Fabricated Transactions Unacceptable

Beijing Youth Daily October 13

The Henan Provincial Administration for Industry and Commerce has recently busted a ring which faked transactions for vendors on ecommerce website JD.com in order to attract more customers. During approximately two years, the fraudsters fabricated nearly 5 million transactions, worth over 1.7 billion yuan ($252 million), for some 2,000 vendors.

Falsifying page view and transaction numbers misleads potential customers. Although the practice can be profitable for online vendors, it seriously damages their image if exposed.

Continuation of the illegal practice hinders the development of the e-commerce industry and jeopardizes the survival of online retailers.

To confront the problem, legislation needs to be improved to specify punishments for online fraud, and law enforcement should also be strengthened.

Monitoring numbers of e-stores should be strengthened, and investigations should be conducted into shops with unusually high traffic.

Successful companies around the world reap profits through hard work. Companies that wish to attain wealth overnight through cheating are bound to fail.

Internet companies represent an important avenue for China’s ongoing economic restructuring. Great attention should be attached, therefore, to combating online fraud, because it can detrimentally affect the emerging Internet industry at large.