With the number of e-commerce sites rising rapidly, so too is the potential for fraud. Most of the column inches dedicated to the subject have concentrated solely on fraud against the consumer, and little has been done to address the fraud that e-traders face. Internet fraud figures vary enormously, but there's no denying that they're high.
Many retailers expect the problem to get worse.
Some online retailers have reported fraud rates of 20 to 80 percent of sales, although experts would estimate the figure to be lower than this. Despite these statistics, retailers cannot ignore the huge number of potential customers out there. Not surprisingly, information on the way in which fraudsters work is kept very quiet. However, anti-fraud payment systems have shown that honest customers have a very predictable way of moving around a store. Fraudsters are also predictable in their behavior, but the way in which they move around a site indicates a sinister objective.