Posts Tagged ‘idate 2010’

Like the knights of yore who converged on King Arthur’s Round Table (not to be confused with the pizza restaurant) to discourse on fighting dragons and saving distressed damsels, industry leaders are coming together at the Monterey Plaza Hotel and Spa in Monterey, California (October 9-10) to address the threat of online fraud and to promote e-commerce.

Based around the theme, “Defeating Online Fraud and Promoting E-Commerce Together,” the ThreatMetrix 2011 Fraud Fighters Summit brings together the top fraud-fighting professionals in the industry, people who have maximized the effectiveness of their ThreatMetrix solutions.

Attendees will have an opportunity to network with peers and share fraud-fighting strategies. They’ll learn new ways to benefit from the ThreatMetrix Cloud-Based Fraud Prevention Platform from experts and come away better informed, motivated and prepared to wage the daily battle against fraudsters.

Presentations from well-known brands will be a highlight of the packed, two-day summit agenda. Featured presenters include:

• Reed Taussig, ThreatMetrix CEO and president, who will formally open the summit and provide an industry overview.
• David Burns, manager of operational risk, Optimal Payments, who will speak on: “Incorporating ThreatMetrix into Real-Time Rule Decisions.”
• Julie Conroy McNelley, senior analyst with the Aite Group’s Retail Banking practice, who covers fraud, data security, anti-money laundering, and compliance issues, will present on “Online and Mobile:  Navigating the Risk Environment.”
• Rhonda MacLean, founder of MacLean Risk Partners LLC, a consulting firm that provides strategic advisory services, will lead a financial service fraud prevention roundtable.
• Steven Boutelle, Lieutenant General, U.S. Army (Retired) and former chief information officer of the U.S. Army responsible for the U.S. Army’s use of information technology, will present on “Cybersecurity: A Government Perspective.”
• Alisdair Faulkner, ThreatMetrix chief products officer, will present a product development roadmap.

Other topics will cover everything from “Building an Effective Fraud Prevention System,” to “Addressing Organized Stealth with ThreatMetrix SmartID,” to “The Identity Challenge,” as well as best practices surrounding the use of ThreatMetrix professional services.

As an added bonus, the conference concludes with a private dinner at the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Right up there — or down there — with recent approval ratings for Congress (15%) and the President (41%) are consumer approval ratings for not getting taken in online (21%).

A joint study — “Mobile Payments & Online Shopping Survey of U.S. Consumers” —  by ThreatMetrix and The Ponemon Institute, which is dedicated to advancing responsible information and privacy management practices in business and government, determined that three in four consumers have either some concerns (53%) or serious concerns (26%) about online fraud. Forty-three percent reported already having been victimized, up a full percentage point from a study done earlier this year.

Despite the fact that most consumers have doubts about Web security, one-third say they intend to buy more online than in brick-and-mortar stores this holiday shopping season. “While consumers continue to show a preference for the convenience of shopping and browsing online, their concerns about becoming a victim of online fraud is also growing,” said Bert Rankin, vice president of marketing, ThreatMetrix. “With mobile thrown into the shopping mix, which is even more apparent this year, consumers and retailers alike need to be well equipped against fraudsters in every possible channel.”

Rankin pointed out that nearly one in three consumers believed the fraud risk was lower on a smartphone or tablet than desktop or laptop. When a group of consumers considered extremely active Internet users were included, that number increased to 39%.

Huh?

Anyway…

According to Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of The Ponemon Institute, “Consumers who have a high propensity to use the Internet for shopping, banking, gaming, social media interactions, and other activities, appear to have a stronger sense of security online — which is not exclusive only to desktops and laptops.  While these users may be savvier when it comes to the digital channel, their safety net may not always be there. Online transactions are a two-way street. While they may think they’re taking the necessary precautions to avoid online fraud, the sites they’re visiting must also be implementing online fraud prevention tactics.”

Adds Julie Conroy McNelley, senior fraud and risk analyst at the Aite Group, “Mobile, in particular, is difficult to protect from fraud. With around 4,000 different device types to secure, it’s often a daunting task. On top of that, few consumers are using anti-virus or anti-spyware software on their mobile devices. Mobile, just like more traditional e-commerce transactions from a desktop, has the potential to become a hotbed for fraud.”

So what devices will shoppers use for Cyber Monday and the upcoming holidays? Forty-nine percent indicated they’d use their desktop or laptop. Thirty-seven percent opted for a smartphone, and 12% a tablet. In fact, one in four respondents already used their smartphone or tablet to make a mobile payment of some kind, with the majority using either PayPal or credit cards for the transaction.

Extremely active Internet users tended toward smartphones (49%) and tablets (17%) with only 34% saying they’d use their desktop or laptop. Of this group 40% said their online purchases would likely exceed ones done in-store.

The most popular purchases using a mobile payments option on a smartphone or tablet are music downloads (77%), online service subscriptions or memberships (75%) and apps for smartphone or tablets (73%). Consumer electronics ranked slightly above clothing, at 48% and 43%, respectively.

For a free Executive Research Summary of the “Mobile Payments & Online Shopping Survey of U.S. Consumers” download it here.”

On one point in the study, there was overwhelming agreement. A whopping 84% of survey respondents said they thought it was important that a retailer express a commitment to protecting them from fraud.  And protecting online companies from cybercriminals is what ThreatMetrix does better than anybody.

The ThreatMetrix Cloud-Based Fraud Prevention Platform, incorporating ThreatMetrix SmartID™ cookieless device identification, provides online businesses with the ability to protect themselves and their customers by verifying new accounts, authorizing payments and transactions and authenticating user logins in real-time — without relying on personally identifiable information (PII) such as birth dates, maiden names and Social Security numbers. And this protection is assured no matter which devices consumers may use.

I am blogging this while standing at the ThreatMetrix booth on the last day of iDate 2010 Miami Beach.  The online dating world is an interesting industry – a global industry comprised of many interconnected pieces.  The online dating world has all the essential ingredients to make a great story:  love, sex, money and crime commingling at Internet speed.  Human desire is the engine that drives the online dating world, and online ads and money are the lubricant.  Where you find love, sex and money you’re going to find fraudsters.

There is a dating site for just about any kind of whatever-it-is that attracts people to one another that you can imagine – and some that you probably can’t.  In fact anyone can start their own niche dating site—yes you too can use a web dating application platform to build your own niche dating site that caters to whatever crowd hasn’t been sliced off into a niche dating site yet.  How about a dating site for dating site scammers…or perhaps something narrower like a dating site for dating site scammers who read Shakespeare?  Web dating has a tribal quality to it that helps makes it all work.  Of course scammers have figured out that hope springs eternal on dating sites where there’s an endless supply of people, many of whom will fall for their scams.

Most dating sites are aware of the scammer element to the business and the risk they pose to their members and their brand.  Scammers are their arch nemesis; I spoke to a few at iDate who described scammers in very personal terms—they really want to nail them—it’s personal. The larger the membership, the more the business has to invest in people and technology to try and keep the creeps away from their customers.  It’s not unusual to hear of a large dating site with 10 or more full time fraud analysts dedicated to staying ahead of the scammers.  Device identification has become more common in the online dating and social networking world.  The ability to bypass a hidden proxy to get the true IP address and IP geolocation in real time of the computers visiting a website is one of the most effective ways to spot a scammer on a dating site (just ask our customers).

Dating sites are susceptible to all three types of fraud: account origination (new member fraud), login fraud and payment fraud (CNP, or card not present). The ability to conveniently and securely accept web payments and avoid chargebacks is critical to the online dating business.  Payment processors and alternative payment services are a key part of making it all work.

And what’s next big thing in online dating?  Mobile of course.  When I asked conference attendees what their big takeaway was from the conference, anything to do with mobile was top of mind.  One person explained that mobile is hot to online dating “because it gives people a way to react instantly any time and anywhere…they don’t have to limit themselves to the time they’re tethered to their computers.”

The brave new world of online dating gives new meaning to the old proverb love is blind: when anyone can be someone else online, how can you be sure that lovesyababy422 in Miami is the hotty she claims to be flirting with you—or an offshore scammer named Gromyko setting you up?

- Tom

The online dating world will converge in Miami in a few weeks at the annual iDate 2010 conference billed as “the largest industry gathering of the year” that covers all business aspects of the dating and social networking markets.   ThreatMetrix will be exhibiting at iDate in booth #506, if you’re attending the conference let us know and we can set up a time to meet.

Online dating and matchmaking is over a $1.1 billion dollar industry in the U.S. alone, according to IBISWorld (www.ibisworld.com), the world’s largest independent publisher of U.S. industry research. The heightened awareness in the online dating world around scams and scammers is likely to push the topic into the sessions and conversations at iDate.  ThreatMetrix helps dating sites identify and stop online dating scammers.  Dave Perez, CEO of EDating for Free—a ThreatMetrix customer—underscores the importance of fraud prevention for his online dating sites this way: “We typically process over 350 new registrations a day.  We’ve significantly reduced the number of scammers that gain access to our site’s functionality while reducing the time spent determining who to register or deny to less than 30 seconds.  ThreatMetrix is a ‘no-brainer’ for dating sites like ours. It has made our site a safer, better protected community while enhancing the user experience.”

Online dating companies – like any other online community or subscription site – are subject to fraudsters around the world. In the case of Christian Dating for Free, one scenario involved overseas fraudsters from Nigeria who pretended to be located in the U.S. and then attempted to extract money using a money order scam.  After establishing the confidence of another community user, the overseas fraudster would send a fake money order and ask the U.S.-based user to deposit it into their bank account and wire money back to them in Nigeria via Western Union. Unfortunately, in most instances the money order turned out to be fraudulent and the user was responsible for paying back the money to their bank.

Once a scammer is tagged by ThreatMetrix, they do not receive a confirmation email on their next registration attempt. ThreatMetrix data is integrated to a Christian Dating for Free home grown dashboard so that their staff can quickly and easily review registrant data to determine whether or not to block a user.

Doron Kim, president and founder of Edating for Free, Inc., parent company of Christian Dating for Free, Catholic Dating for Free, and Black Christian Dating for Free explains that “With ThreatMetrix, we can see the bad guys right away.  Now we see the true data, true city, true IP, and true ISP. In less than five seconds, we can determine if a user who claims that they are in Boston is actually using an IP in Lagos.”

Trust is the bedrock on which online dating services are built. Members must trust one another and they must trust their dating sites to do their best to protect them from scammers. Nobody wants their mystery date to be a dud—let alone a scammer.

David Evans, a dating industry expert who publishes the Online Dating Insider has some great pre-conference tips for the Internet Dating conference that I recommend you check out if you’re headed to iDate 2010 in Miami.

- Tom