The widespread shift to “ecommerce“ — people buying and selling goods online — has brought with it scams that prey on the convenience of online payment applications.

Peer-to-peer payment applications PayPal and Venmo each have articles that warn users of scams that can take money directly from their bank accounts.

Nitin Sukhija, director of the Center for Cybersecurity and Advanced Computing at Slippery Rock University, said these types of peer-to-peer scams could become as commonplace as robocalls.

“’I accidentally paid you, can you pay me back?’” Sukhija said as an example a user might receive. “Or a scammer can basically link you to a different site and ask you to log into your account. It looks like a real site, but it is actually their website you are putting your information into.”

Sukhija said there was a massive increase in phishing attacks, online scams searching for users’ personal information, over the Thanksgiving season. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office has also issued warnings about these scams to state residents.

An Adams Township woman said she was purchasing a dog online, and the seller had asked to be paid via PayPal. After sending the money, the seller claimed they didn’t receive it and asked her to send it again. The woman checked her bank account statement, which included the charge to PayPal, and that is when she caught on to the scam.

While she was able to get the money back through her bank, she said she didn’t want anyone else to get reeled into a possible scam in this way. Sukhija said this method of scamming is becoming more common, but there are tell-tale signs when an operation is not legitimate, and a user should keep an eye on their bank statements as one safety method.

Programmers can use information available online to find a user’s account, and use that information to send them messages, according to Sukhija. These scammers play on the applications’ convenience and relatively new technology to trick people into sending money, and they do it in a similar way to how other online scams work.

“Venmo is a great way to pay friends, you can easily transfer money and it is more used these days by students,” Sukhija said. “Security flaws come into the picture because there are cyber criminals creating these fake pages mimicking systems trying to get money out of you.”

Sukhija said people can avoid falling for these schemes by exercising caution when faced with unknown messages or users. He said people should never give out personal information online, and always keep track of receipts or payment confirmations.

“Nobody from the government will actually call to get information,” Sukhija said. “The best way to avoid this is to ask questions of them and not give them any information.”

Additionally, the attorney general’s website has a page dedicated to reporting online scams, and there are other websites where users discuss scams that they have come across on different apps.

Sukhija said people need to exercise more caution than ever with peer-to-peer payment applications because their use is still developing.

“There is more to come,” Sukhija said. “This is just the beginning.”