Fraud Prevention

Combatting fraud is fundamental to selling online. Our Fraud Prevention category addresses the various types of fraud merchants must prevent — stolen credit cards, identity theft, “porch pirates,” “friendly fraud,” chargebacks, and more. We also look at prevention services, trends, and developments.

Fraud Prevention
Interview: The Future Of Credit Card Fraud

October 29, 2007 • PEC Staff

The risk of credit card fraud and identity theft remain important issues for many potential ecommerce consumers. Practical eCommerce asked John Munsell, founder and CEO of Bizzuka, a web design and development firm, his views on the evolution of online fraud. PeC: The risk of a stole...
Fraud Prevention
Click Fraud Not Top PPC Concern

June 27, 2007 • PEC Staff

Click fraud has been a popular topic of discussion for a number of years, and it doesn’t appear the issue will fade away anytime soon. The industry is full of various numbers thrown around putting the click fraud rate anywhere from .02 percent (claimed by Google) to 30 percent or more. ...
Fraud Prevention
Click Fraud: What To Do When You’ve Been Cheated

June 11, 2007 • Greg Laptevsky

So you think you’re a victim of click fraud, and the question is now what? Well, it’s time to play “cyber detective” and get refunds from pay-per-click (PPC) engines for the wasted dollars. But keep in mind, because click fraud eats away search engine revenue in the form of reimbursed c...
Fraud Prevention
Three Basic Steps Can Curb Credit Card Fraud

February 7, 2007 • PEC Staff

A loss of $15,000 in diamonds during the height of the Christmas-buying frenzy would be enough to make most people sing the holiday blues. Not Pat Coughlin. Coughlin has owned and operated American Diamond Importers, an independent brick-and-mortar jewelry store in St. Clair, Mich., fo...
Fraud Prevention
Don’t Let Selling Internationally Scare You

January 31, 2007 • PEC Staff

Matt Alper launched Copshoes.com three years ago from his living room in San Antonio, Texas. His idea was to sell specialized shoes and boots to police, firemen and security personnel. Now, three years later, he’s moved into his own warehouse, he has 11 employees and 10 percent of his t...
Fraud Prevention
What You Didn’t Know About Payment Systems

January 17, 2007 • PEC Staff

What you don't know can truly hurt your online business. This has never been more true than when you set out to choose an Internet payment systems. It's not so much that making a wrong decision can harm your business irreparably (although, it can); it's that there is so much information...
Fraud Prevention
Fraud-Proofing Your Ebiz

December 11, 2006 • PEC Staff

I know a business that had its website hacked: Its entire customer database was hijacked and thousands of customer credit card numbers were stolen at the same time. In the following months, the hackers did their best to steal as much as they could from this business through a number of...
Fraud Prevention
Do Security Measures Boost Conversion?

December 1, 2006 • Kevin Gold

Achieving high performance for your ecommerce business is complicated. It requires building an effective combination of trust, convenience and relevance on your website using technology, design, usability and influence. If you consider industry statistics, you'll quickly realize why it...
Fraud Prevention
Is Your Data Vulnerable?

October 1, 2006 • Pamela Hazelton

Having just returned from the MIVA Conference, I’m sure my editor is quite antsy. I’m late with this column— not due to procrastination. I’ve always got something to say, but after I instructed a session on security for online store administrators, I realized that a great percentage of ...
Fraud Prevention
Payment Processing: Choose the System that Fits

April 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

One of the most critical decisions business owners have to make is how they are going to process payments from their website. Entrepreneurs frequently find themselves asking if a merchant account is what they need or if they need a private payment system (a “PPS”) such as PayPal or the ...
Fraud Prevention
eCommerce Fraud: Build a Human Firewall

April 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox

There is a fellow from Europe named Kevin Mitnick, who can find your Social Security number online in 15 seconds. He was the hacker who was elevated to “computer terrorist” status by the FBI and Interpol. They caught him and put him in jail for five years, but there are thousands like h...
Fraud Prevention
Winning the Fight Against Click Fraud

April 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

If somebody were to tell you that 20% of your advertising budget was being wasted on fraud, would you be worried? If you advertise on pay-per-click search engines, such as Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), MIVA, or others, you have reason to be concerned. Acc...