E-commerce

Supply Chain Vulnerabilities: E-commerce

E-commerce has transformed global retail by enabling the direct sale and shipment of goods to consumers across borders. While this model has expanded access and efficiency for legitimate businesses, it has also created new vulnerabilities that are systematically exploited by illicit traders. The scale, speed, and fragmentation of online commerce have made e-commerce a high-risk environment for the sale of illegal and unsafe goods.

As part of its broader series on supply chain vulnerabilities, TRACIT identifies e-commerce as a critical enabler of illicit trade. Across a series of reports, TRACIT documents structural weaknesses in online platforms that are exploited across sectors and jurisdictions.

Illicit online trade extends well beyond counterfeit consumer goods to include unauthorised medicines, illegal pesticides, unsafe products, and other goods posing direct risks to public health and safety.
Reliance on voluntary and self-regulatory approaches has failed to curb illicit activity at scale, particularly given the level of operational control platforms exercise over transactions.
Weak seller verification, limited monitoring of listings, and fragmented enforcement across jurisdictions create systemic vulnerabilities in online sales channels.
Digital platforms increasingly shape transactions by controlling visibility, payments, and logistics, yet are often regulated as neutral intermediaries.

Featured reports: Analyzing illicit trade in e-commerce

Foundational report on supply chain vulnerabilities

In TRACIT’s foundational work on supply chain vulnerabilities, e-commerce consistently emerges as a high-risk channel for illicit trade. E-commerce-related risks are documented across the report, reflecting the systemic nature of online trade vulnerabilities.

Access the report here

The landscape of lawlessness online

TRACIT’s forthcoming paper documents recurring shortfalls in how major e-commerce platforms address illicit trade. It highlights persistent gaps between the scale of illicit activity online and the measures currently in place to prevent it, raising questions about the adequacy of existing regulatory, enforcement, and accountability frameworks.

Access the report here

Tackling the sale of illicit pesticides on e-commerce platforms

This report examines how structural weaknesses in e-commerce operations enable the online sale of illicit pesticides at scale, documenting real-world examples and identifying recurring vulnerabilities that expose platforms to criminal abuse.

Access the report here

Fraudulent advertising online: Emerging risks and consumer fraud

A joint TRACIT–AAFA report analysing how systemic weaknesses in online advertising and seller onboarding are exploited to market counterfeit and illegal products with limited risk of detection.

Access the report here

Policy Positions

October 2026
Submission to the European Commission's Public Consultation on the Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List.

TRACIT nominated a set of online platforms and marketplaces for inclusion on the EU's Watch List, based on evidence of persistent counterfeit and pirated goods circulating through their services.

Read the submission

September 2026
Submission to the USTR's 2026 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy

TRACIT submitted priority online-platform nominations to the USTR, identifying recurring structural weaknesses, including inadequate seller verification, insufficient pre-listing controls, reactive notice-and-takedown systems, and weak staydown mechanisms, that enable counterfeit and IP-infringing goods to circulate at scale.

Read the submission

June 2025
Submission to the USPTO's Request for Comments on the OECD's Draft Voluntary Guidelines for Countering Illicit Trade in Counterfeit Goods on Online Marketplaces

TRACIT called for stronger, enforceable language in the OECD's draft guidelines, including mandatory seller verification, proactive blocking of counterfeit listings, and clear platform liability.

Read the submission

January 2021
eCommerce and Fraudulent Advertising: TRACIT Principles & Positions

TRACIT set out a set of principles and policy recommendations to strengthen seller verification, takedown enforcement, and platform accountability across online marketplaces.

Read the submission

MEDIA

9 September 2025, Can the OECD’s Guidelines Help End E-Illicit Trade?
30 July 2020, TRACIT endorses the INFORM Consumer Act
22 July 2020, Media release on consumer risk from fraudulent online advertising

EVENTS

Paris 2024
TRACIT presented its report, "Tackling the sale of illicit pesticides on e-commerce platforms" at the OECD Working Party on Countering Illicit Trade meeting.