Besides providing statistics on what online purchases people were spending their hard-earned money on during Black Friday, ReD also noted that online criminals were out in force, busy spending other people’s money. “Whilst online retailers witnessed a huge upturn in sales this Black Friday, fraudsters are also ‘spending’ more, with an average value of $248 per transaction online, 23% more than the average genuine customer,” said ReD’s CEO, Carl Clump.

And in most cases, it seems that fraudsters were clamoring for the same hot commodities as everyone else. Based on ReD’s list, the three most popular items bought with stolen credit cards were gift cards, Nintendo Wiis and Xbox 360s. Of course, this doesn’t mean that fraudsters will soon be kicking back and playing their stolen video games. It’s important to remember that for criminals, online theft is a business, and the principles of supply and demand are still in effect. Fraudsters choose to steal items that are in high demand because it will be easy to turn those goods around for a quick profit.

The problem is, if online criminals are profiting—it means online merchants aren’t. And while a new camera or video game might be at the top of many of our wish lists this season, for online criminals, it always comes down to one thing: money.

Generally you won’t find the online criminal who commits all aspects of an online fraud independently from stealing the identity, obtaining fraudulent credit, to finally defrauding an online business. Instead, online criminals may specialize in different areas of the fraud process. One criminal may specialize in establishing and utilizing botnets to steal identities. John Pescatore at Gartner Group has been particularly vocal about the rampant threat of botnets on his blog. Another criminal may specialize in hosting phishing sites with guaranteed uptime. Whether it is spam and phishing e-mail distribution, identity theft, credit card databases, or other elements of the fraud value chain, you can find an individual or organization specializing in it.

My point is this. Yes, it is possible and perhaps even likely that online criminals may begin to collaborate and communicate on Facebook and Twitter. The reality of today’s environment, however, is that these criminals have been working together for years in an underground fraud market. That is why it is so essential that legitimate online businesses similarly work together to fight online fraud. That is exactly part of the unique value we bring to our customers at iovation. The chance to work with their peers to establish and share over 100 million unique device reputations to fight online fraud and abuse.