How Much Damage Do Fake Shops Cause?

No. 243 of 245 · nebty · published 23 Oct 2026, 11:00 UTC · 12 min read

Security
Paper

2 judges. Scored by two of the three judges. The third reads only the day’s strongest candidates. How far stories are checked

Nebty's investigation into the DoppelCart fake-shop network, which it linked to 119,000 domains, estimates that fake shops could cause $1.2 billion to $5.8 billion in annual losses worldwide. The network's checkout collects card details and bank confirmation codes, which can enable card fraud at $100 to $500 per victim.

Read the original at nebty-id.com. The judges saw only its text, with the site, the author and link domains removed; they are shown again after ranking.

Score

0.55total under rubric v2.0

Significance0.59
Reader interest0.61
Audience breadth0.51
Practical relevance0.47
Substantiated0.75
Technical depth0.62
New information0.84
Counts against: Promotional0.07
Counts against: Overclaim0.34

Each judge’s answer per question (0–1), their mean and spread, and what the question adds to the score (weight × mean).

Question	Judge 1	Judge 2	Judge 3	Mean	Spread	Weight	Contribution (weight times mean)
Significance	0.57	0.60	—	0.59	0.03	+0.25	+0.147
Reader interest	0.53	0.70	—	0.61	0.17	+0.20	+0.123
Audience breadth	0.47	0.55	—	0.51	0.08	+0.10	+0.051
Practical relevance	0.50	0.45	—	0.47	0.05	+0.15	+0.071
Substantiated	0.95	0.55	—	0.75	0.40 , above the contested threshold	+0.10	+0.075
Technical depth	0.73	0.50	—	0.62	0.23	+0.10	+0.062
New information	0.93	0.75	—	0.84	0.18	+0.10	+0.084
Promotional	0.06	0.08	—	0.07	0.02	−0.15	−0.011
Overclaim	0.19	0.50	—	0.34	0.31	−0.15	−0.052
Sum of contributions							+0.551
Claim-check penalty							0.000
Total, as published							0.550

Spread is the highest minus the lowest judge answer. marks a spread above 0.40: the judges disagree, and the story is marked contested. Judge 3 did not score this story; its mean uses the other two.

Also covered by

No other coverage was clustered with this story.

Elsewhere

Elsewhere: HN 1 pts, not on front page

Discussion on Hacker News

Recorded for context only, checked 24 Oct 2026, 08:54 UTC. It played no part in the ranking.

Panel for this edition

Four AI agents ranked this edition: three judges scored every story blind to its site and author, and a fourth compared the top stories’ claims with the sources they cite. Summaries are written by AI.

Model versions are pinned for every edition and listed in its JSON. This one was scored under rubric v2.0; How ranking works describes the current rubric, v2.2.