The thing that surprises people about online shopping fraud in India is how ordinary it looks. Nobody gets breached by a hooded figure. They get a phone call from someone polite and well-informed who knows their recent order, or they tap a link that opens a page indistinguishable from a store they use weekly.

Which means the defence isn't technical. It's a small set of patterns that, once you know them, are almost impossible to miss — and a couple of habits that make you a hard target regardless of how convincing the approach is.

The red flags, in order of how often they matter

1. A price far below every established store

This is the most reliable single signal in online shopping. If a phone that costs ₹1,20,000 everywhere is listed at ₹39,999, that gap is the scam. Genuine price differences between real retailers are in the hundreds or low thousands — a few percent, occasionally more during a clearance. They are not 60% or 70%.

The reason this works so well as a filter: fraud has to be attractive enough to override caution, which means it has to be dramatically cheap. That same drama is what identifies it. If you know what the product costs at five real stores, the fake price stops looking like luck.

2. The link arrived, rather than you navigating there

Links forwarded on WhatsApp, sent by SMS, or embedded in an unexpected email are the primary delivery mechanism for fake storefronts. The page can be a pixel-perfect copy — copying a website is trivial.

The habit that defeats this entirely: never shop from a link you didn't seek out. If a deal sounds interesting, open the store yourself — type the address or use the app — and find the product there. If it exists, you've lost ten seconds. If it doesn't, you've just avoided the whole problem.

3. A domain that's nearly right

Extra words, unusual endings, hyphens where the real store has none, a familiar brand name followed by something like "-offers" or "-sale". Fake sites rely on the fact that nobody reads addresses carefully, especially on a phone where most of the address is cut off.

Check the part immediately before the first single slash. That's the actual site. Everything after it can say anything at all.

4. Payment pushed off the platform

Any request to pay by direct bank transfer, to a personal UPI ID, or through a link sent separately is disqualifying. Legitimate marketplaces handle payment inside their own checkout because that's the entire point of a marketplace.

A common variant: "pay the delivery agent directly and we'll refund online". This is not how any real platform operates.

5. A call asking you to install an app

This is the single most damaging pattern in India right now, and it deserves the strongest possible warning.

The call is usually about a refund, a failed delivery, or a KYC update. The caller is professional, patient, and may genuinely know details of a recent order. At some point they ask you to install an app so they can "process the refund" or "verify the payment".

That app gives them control of your screen. Everything after that — the banking app, the OTP, the transfer — happens with them watching and directing. No legitimate company will ever ask you to install anything to receive money. Receiving money never requires software, and it never requires your PIN.

6. Any OTP request

No genuine business asks for an OTP. Not for refunds, not for delivery confirmation, not for verification, not for "closing the complaint". An OTP is a key, and the only person who should ever type it is you, into an app you opened yourself.

The same applies to approving a payment request in a UPI app. Receiving money requires no approval and no PIN. If entering your PIN is involved, money is leaving.

7. Urgency on an unfamiliar site

Countdown timers, "3 people are viewing this", "offer expires in 4 minutes". Established retailers use urgency too, which is exactly why it's effective camouflage — but on a site you've never heard of, urgency exists specifically to prevent you from checking anything.

8. Missing basics

No returns policy, no physical address, no working customer support number, no legal pages. Real businesses publish these because they're required to and because customers ask. Their absence is not an oversight.

9. Reviews that all arrived at once

Fifty five-star reviews from the same fortnight, in similar phrasing, with no photographs and no specifics. Genuine review histories are spread over time and include mixed opinions, because real products disappoint some people.

The habits that make you a hard target

Beyond spotting individual red flags, four habits change your baseline risk.

Pay through the platform's own checkout, by card or UPI. Both give you a traceable transaction and a dispute route. Money handed over in cash at your door leaves nothing to dispute.

Record a video when opening anything expensive. Start before you cut the tape, keep the label visible, and don't stop until the item is out. Several platforms now require this for damage claims on high-value items, and it converts an argument into evidence.

Keep invoices as files. Warranty claims and disputes both start with the invoice. An email you'll have to search for in two years is not a filing system.

Buy from well-rated sellers, not just well-known platforms. On marketplaces the platform is a venue. The seller behind the listing has their own rating and their own behaviour, and that's the entity you're actually transacting with.

The three scams people actually fall for

Worth describing the common ones in full, because recognising the shape of an approach is more useful than a list of rules.

The refund call. You return an item legitimately. A day later, someone calls about processing your refund. They know the order, the amount, and the item — because return details can leak through several routes, or because the caller is simply working from a stolen list and got lucky. The refund "requires" an app, or a small verification transaction, or an OTP. The tell is unmissable once you know it: receiving money never requires you to do anything but wait.

The delivery failure message. An SMS says a parcel couldn't be delivered and asks for a small fee — ₹25, ₹40 — to reschedule. The amount is deliberately trivial so you won't think about it, and the point isn't the fee, it's the card details you enter on the payment page. Real couriers do not collect rescheduling fees by SMS link.

The too-good storefront. A site advertising branded goods at 70% off, often promoted through social media, with real product photos lifted from legitimate listings. Payment goes through, nothing arrives, and the site is unreachable within weeks. The single check that prevents this is the one at the top of this article: compare the price against established retailers. Nothing legitimate sits 70% below the market.

What to do if it's already happened

Speed matters more than anything else, and embarrassment is the main thing that costs people money here. This happens to careful, intelligent people constantly. Move fast and skip the self-recrimination.

  1. Call your bank immediately and report unauthorised transactions. Reporting quickly materially affects the outcome — most banks' liability frameworks are time-sensitive.
  2. Freeze or block the affected card or account through the bank's official app or helpline, which you should look up yourself rather than searching for a number online. Fake helpline numbers are their own scam category.
  3. Uninstall any app you were asked to install, and disconnect the device from the internet while you do it.
  4. Report it to the national cybercrime helpline (1930) and the cybercrime portal. Early reporting genuinely improves the chance of funds being held.
  5. Change passwords for banking and email from a different, trusted device.

The part that's easy to forget

Everything above is about avoiding harm. But the ordinary, everyday version of this is much less dramatic: most people don't get defrauded, they just get quietly overcharged by shopping in a hurry on a site they trust.

The habit that protects against both turns out to be the same one. Knowing what a product costs across several established retailers tells you when a "deal" is implausible and when a familiar store is charging ₹2,000 more than the one next to it. One habit, two entirely different kinds of loss avoided.

That's the part 7Compare is built around: a single search across nine established Indian retailers, with the identical product matched across them, so the realistic price range is visible in one view. We only link to those retailers, you always check out on the store's own site, and we never ask for card details, OTPs or account information — because we never handle your payment at all.

If you remember nothing else: the price that's far too good is the warning, not the opportunity. And nobody who is genuinely sending you money will ever need your OTP.