Most internet retailers say cyber criminals are winning the war on web fraud
That’s just one of the interesting findings in our Internet Retailer Conference 2009 informal survey from last week’s event in Boston. The final results are tabulated and ready for your consideration. Some of the comments hands written on the survey forms were insightful. Here’s one that I found especially telling on the question of who’s winning the war on fraud: “nobody wins—the best we can hope for is a draw.” The notion of a “draw” resonates because fraudsters are driven (and highly motivated) to constantly innovate. There’s always room for improvement when it comes to new ways and means to commit cyber fraud.
That’s why the good guys tasked with preventing fraud say “I’m always looking for new ways to fight online fraud.” I heard that a lot at IRCE last week—more evidence that device fingerprinting is the “new new thing” to fight fraud.
Click here to see the full report from our IRCE 2009 survey.
- Tom
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Interesting survey. First chart is shocking with 50% saying they were not aware of it. Must be some pretty small shops. Whether its a returning customer or a fraudster is kind of a weak question however. That is a pretty broad question and Device ID would not be the best method for flagging return customers in the ecommerce world. Overall, good post!
Coby
Thanks for your comment. While we didn’t capture any information about the survey respondents, I suspect you’re right in suggesting that the awareness of device ID was/is probably higher among larger etailers.
The question of returning customer vs. fraudster was intended to stimulate some thought on the part of the person taking the survey to expand their view beyond just stopping fraud but also the value in having more information available earlier in an online transaction to build rapport with customers. One way ThreatMetrix helps here is giving customers the ability to maintain a local white list capability based on device identity that customers can (and do) use today for that purpose.
- Tom
Tom Grubb