Online Fraud in the U.S. up 60%

120,000 complaints in 2003

[choster]

Didn't see this posted at WebmasterWorld yet. It's a very brief article about cases reported to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center. It sound dramatic, but the article doesn't indicate whether this happened because people started reporting to IFCC instead of local law enforcement, or because they became better aware of it, or because fraud really did increase by that amount.

www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1470.asp

[bakedjake]

What's interesting is that the merchants are often the ones hurt most by fraud. I've seen so many stories on local news (I know, I know) that talk about how consumers are "ripped off" online, but very few stories on the effect of fraud (read: chargebacks) on small merchants.

[bird]

up 60%

Absolute figures mean absolutely nothing. How does this relate to the increase in legitimate online transactions?

I'd expect that e-commerce in the US has increased at least 60% over the last year, which would mean that the relative amount of fraud has actually decreased.

[canuck]

Yeah, you have to look at it in terms of % of total transactions/$ spent.

This article [biz.yahoo.com] states that fraud has fallen to 1.7% of revenue in 2003 from 2.9% in 2002.

Of course there are the associated costs/canceled transactions also to take into account with tackling fraud as aggressively as it is now.