ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the risk of consumer fraud associated with shopping agents and automated marketplaces. The risk of fraud applicable to both shopping agents and automated marketplaces mainly refers to the platform operating as a consumer gateway to fraudulent, unscrupulous or unreliable merchants mainly because it does not vet merchant participants. Electronic markets in general, “provide a fertile ground of deceitful participants to engage in old as well as new types of fraud”. The marketplace itself may provide safeguards and guarantees against fraud and breaches of the protocol, as well as impose sanctions on those who have deviated from the prescribed rules. As fraud in the context of shopping agents and automated marketplaces will naturally consist of false product offerings or contractual information addressed to consumers or consumer software, the suggested fraud-preventive obligation seems indirectly to arise from the unfair commercial practices directive.
