While the term “online abuse” often conjures up thoughts of cyber bullying, predatory behavior and customer harassment, Internet-based businesses that experience abusive activity within their social communities have to immediately address customer trust and confidence issues. Otherwise, they risk unwanted conduct between subscribers, which can ultimately lead to financial implications for the organization.

We all know that the top priority for any IT fraud team is to ensure their good customers can safely and easily communicate and do business within their online environment. However, because many business websites have networking communities that bring likeminded individuals together to socialize, the potential for users or criminals to act inappropriately towards others can create problems that can impact the user experience. (more…)

When it comes to online fraud, most people have a zero tolerance policy. Common sense tells us that nobody wants to be conned out of their money, let alone their emotional state of being. While they say love is blind, online lonely hearts may also be turning the other cheek to potential fraud for the sake of a little companionship.

According to the article, “Online dating scams harm ‘thousands’ in Lee County,” Stacey Payne of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office community relations department says oftentimes those seeking love online either don’t want to believe it, are embarrassed, or simply don’t mind that the person they are in love with is a scammer. (more…)

We’ve heard this story before, but unfortunately it happens over and over again. Social media and dating sites are overrun with criminals who pose as legitimate, upstanding individuals, but are really wolves in sheep’s clothing.

In Florida, a man named Martin Kahl met a 51-year-old woman and they developed an online romance. A quick search for the name “Martin Kahl” turns up many men with the same name and no obvious signs of trouble.

This particular Martin Kahl told his online girlfriend that he would soon be working in Nigeria (red flag) on a construction project, but a short time later he informed her that the job had fallen through. He cried poverty and asked her to send him money, which she did.

(If there are people in your life who might be prone to falling for a scam like this, please reel them in immediately. Any of their financial transactions ought to require a cosignatory.)

Anyway, during their affair, Kahl claimed he had been arrested (red flag) on some bogus charge, and requested that the woman bail him out to the tune of $4,000, which she most likely paid via money wire transfer (red flag). (more…)

It has been a while since my last blog post as the infrastructure team at iovation has been hard at work building out our latest data center in the Westin Building located in Seattle. This new data center is situated in a brand new state-of-the-art facility within the Westin Building which I am going to walk you through here today. We find that in the SaaS industry the quality of provider’s facilities varies widely (and is very opaque) and so we are going to do our best to be transparent here by using photos liberally.

The Westin Building is easily the best connected facility in the Northwest United States. Via our patch panel in the meet-me-room we can rapidly connect to dozens of global telecommunications carriers serving the US, Asia, Canada, Europe, and the rest of the world with a simple fiber optic jumper cable. This facility is also home to the Seattle Internet Exchange on which we are a member.

If you are an iovation customer and would like to directly connect to us within this facility or across the SIX please contact me.

From an infrastructure point of view, keeping the iovation service online at all times and keeping the “bad guys” from harming our customers is always Job #1. To do this, we employ many levels of redundancy, both within a given facility, and between multiple facilities. As with any data center, this starts with the electrical power feeding the facility. Every piece of iovation equipment is fed from dual power sources which are completely redundant all the way back to the power utility. It should also be noted that power failures in Seattle are nearly nonexistent as the grid is extremely robust (fed largely by hydro-power).   (more…)

All my life, I’ve been waiting for someone to give me a million dollars in diamonds, which have been willed to me by my long-lost Somalian stepfather, who’s supposedly the third generation dictator under the humble Mr. George Kinneus the Third. Or something like that.

If you receive an offer resembling that one, run for the hills.

This is what happened to the 55-year-old grandmother in New Zealand, who was simply looking for love online. She was checking out her prospects on Match.com, the most popular dating site. The grandmother got a “wink,” which is like a “poke” on Facebook, from “kiwibloke25.” According to his profile, “kiwibloke25” was a 55-year-old man seeking a serious relationship with a woman between 49 and 68 years old. (more…)

Meet with Cory at iDate West

On June 22-24, the Internet Dating Conference will be taking place in Beverly Hills at the SLS Hotel. The 8th annual show assembles senior dating and social networking executives to network and share best practices.

Attendees will hear from the likes of SpeedDate, Google, Click 2 Asia, Pink Sofa, Match.com, Grindr, DatingHype.com and Mark Brooks of Online Personals Watch.

From anti-fraud experts iovation, Senior Sales Executive Cory Swick will be attending the show. Cory has been a frequent speaker at the Internet Dating events, presenting case studies and leading panels on protecting brand reputation and customers against online scams, predators and spammers.

This year Cory will be talking to online communities about the latest enhancements to iovation’s fraud-fighting service, ReputationManager 360. These recent developments include mobile SDKs (iOS and Android) and a suite of new and updated business rules that offer great flexibility and control over the activity on dating sites.  The sophisticated business rules allow sites to identify specific characteristics or behaviors at the device, account or transaction level. Business rules are combined into rule sets to manage the risk associated with different interactions on the dating site – such as profile creation or payment.

Dating sites configure and weight business rules in various categories to efficiently identify spammers and scammers, including:

• Evidence Rules – Trigger an alert when activity comes from an account or device already associated with fraud such as online scams or financial fraud.
• Geolocation Rules – Trigger an alert when activity is coming from an unauthorized country or through a proxy.
• Velocity Rules – Trigger an alert when thresholds for the number of accounts opened, or the number of devices accessing an account has been exceeded within a certain timeframe. Or perhaps when an account has been accessed by too many countries.

(more…)

This is just weird, but what about social media isn’t weird? We “friend” people we’ve never met. We share our plans, location, and mother’s maiden name with the world.

In New Zealand, weird can be defined as a 28-year-old Auckland woman who created and used several fake online profiles depicting young, pretty women to befriend unsuspecting high school boys. (more…)