A U.S. court recently ruled that banks and financial institutions will not only be held liable for fraudulent losses from business accounts, but also bear the responsibility for protecting customers through the use of fraud detection mechanisms. This decision in no way, shape or form will change the way banks already go about detecting fraud by looking at everything from IP addresses, geolocation, velocities and anomalies that could tip off fraud professionals about potentially suspicious online transactions and other high-risk activity.

However, to ensure they stay one step ahead of today’s profit-driven fraudsters, banks need to use the most advanced, anti-fraud techniques to prevent criminals from gaining access to legitimate online bank accounts. Michael Grillo’s article, “Combating Online Banking Fraud – A Top 10 List,” provides a checklist of the essential fraud detection methods that all banks should consider to ensure they are doing everything they can to stop online fraud, including: (more…)

Last week, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) released its 2009 Annual Report on Internet fraud activity, and the results were staggering. According to the report, in 2009 U.S. citizens lost nearly $560 million to online scams. That number more than doubled the $265M in online fraud losses reported in 2008. The IC3, which tracks worldwide complaints of Internet fraud through its Web site, also said the total number of complaints in 2009 jumped 22% compared to 2008.

In the article, “Internet fraud’s U.S. price tag put at $550 million,” Donald Brackman, director of the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), said the growing figures can be largely attributed to increasingly sophisticated online schemes and cyber criminals’ ability to hide their true identities online. (more…)