Internet criminals follow a similar editorial calendar as newspaper and magazine editors, coordinating their attacks around holidays, and the change in seasons. They further capitalize on significant events and natural disasters.

On Super Sunday weekend much of the scamming taking place is designed to separate the public from their money using the Big Game as the lure. People are seeking information on the Game and are being tackled by criminals who steal the ball.

The promise of cheerleader-filled videos along with downloadable player pictures or even Big Game memorabilia will dominate the scamverse. (more…)

When it comes to helping online businesses fight fraud and abuse, iovation is in a league of its own.

After being recognized by the international gaming and online dating communities in January as one of the top technologies for preventing fraud and increasing profitability, productivity and efficiency, we are extremely proud and honored to be recognized by industry leaders in e-Commerce as one of the most innovative fraud fighting tools for online or multi-channel retailers.

To be eligible for the awards, all entrants must be available for online or multi-channel retailers to use for the purpose of measuring, monitoring or mitigating one or more of the following: card-not-present fraud; advancing online data security; improving online payment processes; and advancing the MRC’s vision of making electronic commerce more efficient, safe and profitable.

This week, the Merchant Risk Council (MRC) announced that iovation ReputationManager 360 has been named a finalist for the 2011 MRC Emerging Technology Awards (also known as the METAwards). The awards are judged by a panel of merchants that include the likes of eBay, BestBuy.com, Go Daddy, HP, Microsoft, NCsoft, Tiffany & Co., Urban Outfitters, T-Mobile, among others. (more…)

We’ve recently learned that iovation ReputationManager 360 has been selected by the Info Security Products Guide as a finalist for this year’s Global Excellence Awards. Our fraud prevention service, which combines device identification, device reputation and real-time device risk reporting to prevent card-not-present (CNP) fraud and other online abuses, has been recognized in the categories of Risk Management and Best Security Service.

While this and the other accolades we’ve received lately have been nothing short of overwhelming, we are extremely proud of being recognized by industry leaders and associations across multiple industries. Because we serve online retail, gaming, social community and financial services companies, the acknowledgements have been a testament to iovation’s ongoing commitment to make the Internet a safer place to interact and conduct business, as well as reinforces the positive impact we make in the everyday lives of our customers by protecting their online transactions to reduce fraud rates.

The 2011 Global Excellence Awards will be announced at an awards gala, February 16th, in San Francisco.

Most of us would have no idea Egypt had pulled the plug on the Internet unless it was splashed all over the news. However one company called iovation knew right away.

Basically “just like that” the up to 1000 fraud checks they receive every hour out of Egypt dropped to zero. At first glance one would think there was some type of meltdown or maybe Egyptian scammers all of a sudden decided to get a job.

Normally, iovation would see thousands of queries from Egyptian customers interacting with businesses of all types, including social networks, online dating sites, online gaming sites, banks and retailers. Then at about 6:00 pm Eastern time, nothing.

“We’ve got a unique view of the Internet at iovation. Our service experiences the interaction of unique computers and mobile devices from every nation on earth, across a broad swath of Internet commerce,” says VP of Corporate Development, Jon Karl. “When we’re seeing Egypt’s Internet fall off a cliff, it’s at a more precise individual user level rather than just through aggregated online traffic. While transactions from Egypt represent a very small percentage of the queries to iovation’s service, it has a ripple effect that’s felt by a wide variety of our customers.” (more…)

To expand our presence in the Japanese market, we’ve partnered with an exceptionally talented team based in Tokyo, called Info Innovation Japan.  Our new partner will extend iovation’s anti-fraud services to Japan’s leading online brands including retailers, social networks, dating sites, online gaming such as MMOs and virtual worlds, and financial services.

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iovation knows that when your business is on the line, speed and reliability matter.  Whether it is page load times for your customers, or the speed in which we can provide you real-time reputation analysis, every millisecond counts.

There are many facets to building a highly available, lightning fast infrastructure (which we will cover in more depth in future blog posts), but today I would like to start at the very beginning with our DNS architecture.

The first thing that happens when an iovation ReputationManager 360 customer (or a customer’s end user) tries to connect is a DNS (Domain Name System) lookup to convert a name (like www.iovation.com) to an IP address (74.121.28.140).  This DNS query must complete before any further interaction with the service can proceed. (more…)

I am very excited to share the news that for the second straight year, iovation has been named a finalist for Best New Technology at the upcoming 2nd Annual Online Dating Industry Awards. After taking home last year’s title for Best New Technology for a SaaS solution that detects fraud before the online business or customers are impacted, this award recognizes our new solution for the “best individual technology created by a vendor for dating and matchmaking websites.”

This is quite an honor for a team so dedicated to building and delivering solutions to help online dating sites protect their business and members from fraud and abusive behavior.

Released in the fall, ReputationManager 360 steps up the defense against online crime activity and abuse by combining customizable business rules, risk profiles, device anomalies, and the firsthand experience of 2,000 fraud analysts around the world.

eHarmony’s Director of Risk Management, Ella Grutman, states, “eHarmony continuously identifies and applies the latest and best fraud protection tools. iovation offers the most comprehensive and effective option to augment our current methods.” (more…)

Relying on a single prevention technique for anything is risky because either the technique doesn’t work for every situation, or someone will figure out how to get around it. This certainly applies to Internet fraud, where prevention specialists work around the clock to stay multiple steps in front of the bad guys.

Fraudsters excel at hiding their true identity. True professionals in the field of fraud detection and prevention must employ a defense-in-depth approach, and iovation deploys one of the most sophisticated with a multi-tiered approach to recognize trouble when it is near. Our innovative service to recognize risk has been constantly refined over the past six years. (more…)

A pair of cyberfraud advisories were issued to warn businesses and consumers about corporate account takeover fraud.

According to Errol Weiss, who runs the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) corporate account takeover task force, the effort by his group and other federal law enforcement agencies is to make businesses and consumers more aware of this type of cybercrime and provide recommendations on how they can protect themselves against such attacks. (more…)

A recent global study on online security revealed that over the past year nearly one in three U.S. online consumers have experienced online credit card fraud. The study, which surveyed the experiences and perceptions of consumers from the U.S., Finland, Malaysia, Poland, Sweden and the U.K., had some interesting findings, including:

Studies like these continue to remind us of how vulnerable consumers are to the growing threats that exist online. Unfortunately, the second victim to these crimes are the online merchants that are targeted by cyber criminals using stolen data to commit fraudulent transactions. (more…)

As we wrap up the third quarter of 2010, iovation continues to see significant growth in the total number of device reputation checks performed for online businesses, along with the number of unique devices managed in the Device Reputation Authority (DRA) database.

With only three months remaining, iovation has already increased the annual growth rate for processed transactions by 67% over 2009. With more than 3.9 billion cumulative device reputation checks processed for e-commerce, financial, travel, gaming and online communities today, we expect to break 4 billion early in Q4.

We’ve also increased the overall number of unique devices by 110% over last year. Starting in 2006 with 5 million devices in our system, we now manage more than 390 million unique devices (including PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, Blackberries, Android, etc.). Surpassing 400 million unique devices is just on the cusp.

With cybercrime fraud losses more than doubling in 2009, Internet-based businesses need security solutions that allow them to proactively identify and make educated decisions on all incoming transactions. Through fraud and abuse evidence submitted by our worldwide, cross-industry subscriber base, iovation ReputationManager 360 combines device and account profiles, analytics, custom reporting, real-time business rules, device anomalies, and the experience and expertise of over 2,000 fraud analysts to help customers make quick, confident decisions on every online transaction request.

When it comes to managing risk for online transactions, we get a lot of questions about how our approach compares to other commercial solutions. Establishing business rules and risk scoring in combination with device reputation ranks high among topics of interest. Simply put, iovation uses the device and transaction data available to any vendor, and combines it with the strongest database of historical device risk data available on the market today.

Risk scoring, when you boil it down, is the simple process of taking the data you have available about a given transaction and the device requesting that transaction, and measuring characteristics that would lead you to believe that it is either valid or risky. Most device-based risk scores, including those offered by iovation, incorporate common types of risk elements in their scoring. These may include:

• Velocity-based Rules – Measuring device activity in a given time frame
• Transaction Anomalies – Device characteristics that indicate the device is masking its identity, such as using an anonymizing proxy, or disabling technologies like flash

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When it comes to online dating scams, we all like to believe we learn from our own, and others, experiences. But according to new statistics on Romancescams.org, a website dedicated to fighting online romance scams, the average loss per person involved in a romance scam has climbed to a staggering $11,500. That’s up from a 2007 report where the advocacy group cited the average loss per victim was $7,900.

According to the article, “Website offers forum on avoiding romance scams,” fraudsters continue to successfully scam unsuspecting lonely hearts by using stolen credit cards to join online dating sites and set up fake profiles. From there, they quickly lure their victims off the dating sites and onto more personal lines of communications such as instant messaging and email before romance sites can discover the stolen credit card and pull their fake profiles. (more…)

With fraudsters better at hiding their true identities, it’s getting more and more difficult to know which online transactions to trust and which to reject. Would if you could confidently identify good transactions from the bad ones before they occurred? How valuable would this intelligence be in your ongoing efforts to reduce the risk of online fraud or abuse? (more…)

Despite all the warning signs and expert advice on how to avoid online dating scams, singles looking for partners online continue to be duped out of hundreds of millions of dollars each year. According to the article, “Online lonely-hearts scam is costing Britons millions of pounds,” online romance fraud has become so prevalent in Britain that the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) is sending officers from its anti-kidnap and extortion units to help train police in areas where many of the mass-marketing romance scams originate, Nigeria and Ghana.

Romance scams have been around much longer than online dating sites. While the Internet has increased people’s chances of finding partners, it also provides a level of anonymity that enables fraudsters to hide their true identities to perpetrate any number of fraudulent or abusive activities against individuals and online dating providers. (more…)