By Ebenezer SABUTEY
Device Reputation Authority, iovation, an American entity which protects online businesses from fraud and abuse has announced last week at the Combating Cybercrime in Gaming Conference held at Earlst Court in London that transactions originating from Ghana are most likely to connect to fraud.
The transactions are said to be in online financial services, retail, gaming, and social communities among others.
This was after the US-based company released its key findings on online fraud for the year 2011 at the event.
According to the findings on the source of online fraud during 2011, Ghana was first on the top five countries globally, followed by Nigeria, the Philippines, China and Israel.
Meanwhile Nigeria, another West African country has topped the chart in the company’s survey from 2009 to 2010 with increased number of mobile internet and other cyber materials with Ghana from the 3rd position now climbing to beat Nigeria in the latest survey to top the group worldwide.
“Although Ghana topped our list, online fraud is a global problem,” said founder and CEO of iovation, Greg Pierson in a statement.
“We see proof everyday that cyber fraud knows no boundaries, crossing borders, devices and industries at which will make it all the more important to share data and about truly global device activity,” Pierson added.
Overall, the company said it stopped 50 million fraud attempts in 2011, and is at a “current pace of 150,000 fraudulent transactions” per day with majority coming from West African and Ghana to be precise.
According to iovation, it also detected a 400% increase in fraud via mobile devices last year. Although these devices represent only 4% of the overall fraud total, this dramatic increase mirrors general growth trends for mobile usage, and indicates that recognizing and stopping fraud will only become more challenging, the company added.
But the company says it has been able to track some of these fraud attempts with the help of more than 2,000 fraud analysts report as well as the sharing of fraud experiences through its database of internet devices and relationships.
“iovation identified these fraud attempts using its original “Reputation Manager 360” solution, which tracks more than 800 million devices across a broad range of industries and has protected more than 6.5 billion total online transactions to date, since its inception” it said.
“iovation’s key 2011 findings and milestones consists total unique devices, including computers, tablets and mobile phones, in iovation’s shared database grew by 71% to 800 million and 33% of known bad devices have been actively seen for more than 12 months.
Companies contributing data and relying on iovation’s technology grew 38% to 200%, with customers spanning from the recognizable Fortune 500 enterprises to medium-sized companies in industries like financial services, retail, logistics, travel, dating, and social networking and gaming also known as gambling.
“iovation expanded European operations, opened an additional data centre and grew US engineering staff by almost 30% to address the growth in customers.
Enhancement to its industry-leading ReputationManager 360 solution includes improvements in device recognition, user experience, real time services and infrastructure.
ReputationManager 360 was recognised with 16 awards in 2011, named visionary in Gartner Group’s 2011 Magic Quadrant and won the 2011 Fraud and Compliance Solution of the year by EGR Magazine.
Companies make real-time queries to iovation’s knowledge base of 800 million devices to prevent fraud loss and protect their customers. By utilizing this shared information, iovation is able to stop known offenders and predict whether or not new devices will be used to commit fraud.
Combating this online fraud and abuse is no easy task and iovation doesn’t do it alone; more than 2,000 fraud analysts report and share fraud experiences through iovation’s database of Internet devices and relationships.
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