FRAUD RAMPANT ON THE WEB

FRAUD RAMPANT ON THE WEB A million fraud attacks stopped in Q1 of 2008…and that's by just one company! The fraud protection and device reputation authority Iovation reported the startling news this week that it has been instrumental in its customers killing more than a million online fraud attempts in the first half of 2008.   The company has processed more than one billion device reputation queries this year, and reported that in the first quarter of 2008 alone it helped customers block over 900 000 fraudulent and abusive activities coming from 230 different countries. "As eCommerce continues to grow at a rapid pace, Iovation is seeing similar growth trends in the amount of online fraud and abuse that is occurring across multiple industries," says Scott Olson, vice president of marketing.  "During the first quarter, we saw consistent geographic devices and accounts targeting specific verticals." Iovation identifies physical Internet-enabled devices and accounts with histories of fraud and abuse activity, sharing its Device Reputation Authority network of over 60 million unique device reputations across multiple networks to protect online businesses from all forms of online fraud and abuse.   Geographically, of the countries that Iovation tracked in Q1, Israel topped the list of the highest percentage of denied transactions at 15 percent.  The Philippines and Belgium rounded out the top three countries with the highest online fraud rates at 8 percent and 7 percent. The company also reported industry-specific geographic fraud trends based on device reputation queries it performed in Q1.  Those findings included: * For customers in Internet Gambling, Panama had the highest percentage of denied transactions at 6 percent.  Costa Rica and Canada followed with 3 percent and 2 percent, respectively.  These were relatively low rates of fraud. * For customers in the Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMO) space, devices coming from Israel had the highest percentage of denied transactions at 34 percent.  Mexico and Australia followed with 19 percent and 13 percent, respectively.
   
* For customers in the Online Social Networking sector, devices coming from Belgium had the highest percentage of denied transactions at 15 percent.  The Philippines and Nigeria followed with 11 percent and 7 percent. * For Online Retail customers, devices coming from Ghana had the highest percentage of denied transactions at 20 percent.  Vietnam and Lebanon followed with fraud rates of 14 percent and 7 percent. *For customers in the Financial Services sector, which denied 0.30 percent of their worldwide transactions in Q1, the Netherlands had the highest percentage of denied transactions at 1.66 percent.  Germany and the UK followed with 1.24 percent and 1.04 percent, respectively.