Internet fraud prevention

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Internet fraud prevention is the act of stopping various types of internet fraud. Due to the many different ways of committing fraud over the Internet, such as stolen credit cards, identity theft, phishing, and chargebacks, users of the Internet, including online merchants, financial institutions and consumers who make online purchases, must make sure to avoid or minimize the risk of falling prey to such scams.^[1]

The speed and sophistication of the online fraudulent actors continues to grow.^[2] According to a 2017 study conducted by LexisNexis, $1.00 lost to fraud costs organizations (merchants, credit card companies and other institutions) between $2.48 to $2.82 – "that means that fraud costs them more than roughly 2 1⁄2 times the actual loss itself."^[1]

Three constituencies have a direct interest in preventing Internet fraud. First, there is the consumer who may be susceptible to giving away personal information in a phishing scam, or have it be acquired by rogue security software or a keylogger. In a 2012 study, McAfee found that 1 in 6 computers do not have any sort of antivirus protection, making them very easy targets for such scams.^[3] Business owners and website hosts are also engaged in the ongoing battle to ensure that the users of their services are legitimate. Websites with file hosting must work to verify uploaded files to check for viruses and spyware, while some modern browsers perform virus scans prior to saving any file (there must be a virus scanner previously installed on the system).^[4] However, most files are only found to be unclean once a user falls prey to one. Financial institutions, such as credit card companies, who refund online customers and merchants who have been defrauded also have a strong interest in mitigating Internet fraud risk.^[5][1]