Avoiding E-Commerce Fraud in 2019

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners about 50% of small business become victims of fraud, which incurs about an average of $114,000 of total damage. Online attacks like phishing, hacking, and fraudulent transactions are becoming common as technology becomes sophisticated. Once we were only looking out for spam messages and virus-laden links, but now we have to be suspicious of even our own customers.

The good news is that there are steps to take to protect your online business from these harmful attacks and ensure that sensitive information being sent to and from your website are safe.

Types of online fraud

It is important is to understand what fraud is before going into how you can minimise its attacks on your website. Online can be categorised into two:

• Identity theft – stealing credit card numbers, passwords, and other personal information. Some hackers sell the information to other people who can use it to open an account in other e-commerce websites and make purchases.
• Phishing – stealing sensitive information by posing as a trustworthy entity. The information stolen, like usernames and passwords, can be used to lock out the original owner out of their account so they can use it for their own gain.

A lot of people do not check their credit card statements or their log-in history thoroughly. It is up to online business owners to make sure that they’ve set up precautions to avoid fraud attacks from happening.

Check for impostors

One of the first things you should do is see if there are websites posing as you. Do a domain lookup via WHOIS and look for similar domain name websites. Check whether they are deceiving users or they are a wholly different kind of website.

Be PCI compliant

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) is a group of big brands like MasterCard and Visa which has set standards and best practices in preventing fraud. For online retailers, ensuring that your website passes the PCI best practices is mandatory, and the forum strictly enforces it.

Monitor transactions

By now, you should be familiar with the buying patterns of your customers. If not, it starts with auditing the transactions. Look at the billing and shipping information and check for inconsistencies. There are tools which you can use to track your customer’s IP address so you can check whether they come from known fraudster bases. For more information, you can look at the FBI’s list of common fraud schemes.

Use the Card Verification Value

The Card Verification Value (CVV) are three of four digits found at the back of the credit card number. PCI rules make it impossible for you to store a customer’s CVV, which is why it is a good security measure to take. Unless online attackers steal the card itself, they will never get a hold of the CVV.

Lastly, make sure that your operating system is up-to-date. These systems continuously roll out preventive measures to help you avoid online fraud and other cyber-attacks. Follow these tips so that your customers won’t have to worry about their transactions with you.