A quarter of fashion and luxury goods advertised on Facebook are counterfeit: research

Two Italian cyber-security experts report having found that about a quarter of the fashion and luxury ads they examined on Facebook were for counterfeit goods, Bloomberg reported.

The ads, offering items such as $180 Ray-Ban Aviator eyewear for less than $30, on bogus e-commerce sites registered by Chinese front companies, according to Andrea Stroppa and Agostino Specchiarello.   

Their research was based on a review of over a thousand ads, including 180 in the category of luxury and fashion. Of those, 43 pointed to counterfeit stuff.

Facebook said it went to great lengths to find illegitimate listings and to respond to requests for removal. The social network reviewed and took action on reports of illegal ads that were made to the company, a spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail. "We prohibit fraudulent or misleading claims or content, and to enforce our terms and policies, we have invested significant resources in developing a robust advertising review program that includes both automated and manual review of ads," she said.

For years now fraudulent web links had been a battleground for luxury companies. LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton last September ended a longstanding dispute with Google, and agreed to work with the search company to help prevent vendors from advertising counterfeit goods online.

The ads look legitimate at first sight, and also lead to websites that looked like genuine retailers, according to the researchers, which potentially tricked average Facebook users into believing they were buying real products without realising it.

"You don't know where you're going to end up," Stroppa told Mashable.com. "And in many cases your credit card is at risk, thanks to obscure payment systems backed by companies you have no idea who they are."

Stroppa and Specchiarello set up 12 dummy Facebook accounts and from a sample of 1,067 ads, focused on the 180 fashion and luxury ads. In the sample, 43 pointed to websites selling counterfeit goods, according to the study.

The researchers said they were set up using various techniques to trick visitors. The URLs too looked legitimate, such as www.rayban-ireland.com, and even included fake logos of security and payment system companies.

The researchers said many of the domains, were registered in China, and their apparent owners used Chinese email accounts. Also while it was impossible to prove the sites were run by Chinese organisations, the researchers wrote, there were various clues pointing in that direction.