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The
European Union executive says that rogue traders have tried to
sell products online that are falsely presented as cures for
coronavirus or prevention of infection, and fraudsters have used
offers to steal email addresses and passwords.
"We know from our earlier experience that fraudsters see this
pandemic as an opportunity to trick European consumers,"
Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders said in a statement.
"We need to be even more agile during the second wave currently
hitting Europe," he added after a meeting with platform
executives at which he encouraged them to join forces to
strengthen their response to would-be fraudsters.
The online platforms liaising with the European Commission to
fight consumer scams are Allegro, Amazon, Alibaba/AliExpress,
CDiscount, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft/Bing, Rakuten,
Verizon Media/Yahoo and Wish.
It said that since March these platforms have reported the
removal of hundreds of millions of illegal offers and
advertisements and confirmed a steady decline in new coronavirus-related
listings.
Separately, the Commission said a new report showed Facebook,
Google, Microsoft, Twitter and TikTok had taken "useful actions"
to fight false and misleading coronavirus-related information
but harmful content was still present online.
"Viral spreading of disinformation related to the pandemic puts
our citizens' health and safety at risk," Thierry Breton,
Commissioner for the Internal Market, said in a statement.
"We need even stronger collaboration with online platforms in
the coming weeks to fight disinformation effectively
(Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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