New tactics proposed to fight online fraud

Thursday, February 4, 2016 - 15:01 by Sarah Collinson

Although consumers are already advised to use strong passwords and avoid dodgy sites if they want to shop online, new advice from the police could involve a far more drastic approach to e-commerce security.

Experts are now suggesting that people should set up a new bank account specifically for use when buying products and services online, according to This Is Money. And retailers are also being urged to do more to make sure that their security measures are up to scratch.

Each day it is estimated that around a thousand people in the UK fall victim to some form of online fraud, whether as a result of a direct hack carried out by a third party, or through a phishing scam, where they are tricked into giving away personal information.

This is made all the easier because 66 per cent of people retain the same username and password combination for each and every e-commerce site where they carry out safe shopping online. So if this information becomes compromised, people are exposed to fraud on a huge scale.

As a result, it is unsurprising that the annual cost of fraud in the UK tops £52 billion, with a nine per cent increase registered over the course of 2015. And around a fifth of the crimes committed in this area are as a result of e-commerce scams.

This problem is compounded by the fact that experts believe that the majority of fraud cases are simply not reported. But even if people are losing relatively small sums of money and deciding to ignore the loss, this all adds up to a massive amount of income for cyber criminals, which intensifies the problems faced by retailers and poses a persistent threat to online security for consumers.