Report: e-Commerce fraudsters' haul may reach US$3.6bn in 2007

Not surprisingly, merchants are employing more antifraud tools on their e-commerce sites. One possible - and unwelcome - result is a slowdown in response to legitimate customer orders. 27% of orders were manually reviewed in 2007, compared to 23% the year before; the number of orders requiring manual processing is growing faster than online sales.

It is becoming increasingly unsafe to buy or otherwise conduct business online, according to the ninth annual CyberSource survey on e-commerce fraud.

Fraudsters will divert approximately US$3.6 billion from US e-commerce in 2007, a 20% increase over 2006, based on survey results.

Merchants are working aggressively to hold back the tide. Their various online security products and related best practices are keeping the fraud rate stable, notes CyberSource. Still, it's requiring the expenditure of more resources to keep fraudsters at bay.

Survey participants estimated that 1.4% of their online sales this year will be diverted to illegitimate sources - the same percentage as last year. However, that's 1.4% of a far higher volume of sales. That translates into dollar losses equal to US$3.6 billion in goods and services this year, up from US$3.1 billion in 2006.

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