PayPal warns against increasing online fraud

Online fraud always goes up during the recession, stated Everett Collection Katherine Hutchison, PayPal’s senior director of global risk management state during the presentation on the “arms race” of online fraudsters, and online retailers and shopper at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

She stated the fraudsters were using telephone services designed for the deaf in order to access an operator with a different voice to make calls on their behalf to a call center. And the operator couldn’t do anything about it, although they “could realize this is very likely to be fraud.” Although due to the developed stage of e-commerce sites many of these old techniques do not work any more, fraudsters are finding their ways to continue the harm.

Moreover, fraudsters are taking advantage of the current economic situation, trying to access private information by pretending to be a new bank that needed to confirm address and other account details.

Hutchison urged businesses to put efforts to stop fraud. However, she warned them that too much verification can annoy or turn away legitimate customers, especially from the countries with the high risk of fraud.