Ghana pips Nigeria and Israel for biggest source of fraudsters

Rating: 400 per cent increase in fraud via mobile devices in 2011

Transactions originating from the country of Ghana are most likely to correlate to fraud, according to iovation. Next in the list of naughty boys comes Nigeria followed by the Philippines, China and Israel. Using its patented ReputationManager 360 solution, iovation stopped 50 million fraud attempts in 2011 alone. Now the company’s system tracks more than 800 million different devices and the majority of attempts are being made from PCs or Macs. However, iovation detected a 400 percent increase in fraud via mobile devices in 2011. The system recognises the major mobile hardware brands but the company says its figures indicate that recognising and stopping mobile fraud will only become more challenging in 2012.Although mobile devices represent only 4 per cent of the overall fraud total, the figures represent a dramatic increase in mobile fraud attempts.

iovation says that during the last 90 days, it has reviewed 8 million transactions from mobile phones. The overall run rate for all attempts is currently 150,000 fraudulent transactions per day.

As iovation’s CEO, Greg Pierson, says, “Although Ghana topped our list, online fraud is a global problem. We see proof everyday that cyber fraud knows no boundaries—crossing borders, devices and industries at will which makes it all the more important to share data and about truly global device activity.”

Total unique devices (which includes tablets and mobile phones) in iovation’s shared database grew by 71 percent to 800 million.

Companies contributing data and relying on iovation’s ReputationManager 360 to combat fraudsters grew to 200 in 2011.

They represent industries such as financial services, travel, dating, social networking and gaming/gambling.

iovation doesn’t go it alone to detect fraud. Over 2,000 fraud analysts report and share fraud experiences through iovation’s database of Internet devices and relationships.

What we think

GoMo News wonders how many of the online app and music stores are hooked into iovation’s system to help prevent fraudulent downloads?