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Auction site eBay takes the fight to online fraudsters |
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| Written by Rosie Lombardi, on Tue-October-2009 |
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 Web businesses such as eBay have successfully extended the reach of sellers and buyers across the globe. But unfortunately, they’ve also extended the reach of the bad guys who resell stolen items on these sites.
“It’s a huge problem. And retail isn’t the only sector that’s affected
by online fraud — any company that has a product that can be resold is
susceptible,” says Peter Martin, president at AFI International Group
Inc., a Toronto-based security firm.
eBay’s site was designed to make it to make it easy to connect sellers
and buyers, not to counter fraud, says Cynthia Navarro, principal at
Finnegan’s Way, a San Francisco-based investigative firm. “There were
many disgruntled companies and tons of complaints initially. But eBay’s
grown over the years, and has instituted many programs to combat fraud
on its site.”
What eBay is doing
Online businesses are evolving, and are growing increasingly
co-operative when it comes to combating crime. As the largest online
auction platform, eBay is taking the lead in implementing security
mechanisms that make it easier to investigate and prosecute criminals.
One example is eBay’s VeRO program to report infringements of
intellectual property rights to authorities, says Navarro. “When eBay
first came out with VeRO, it wanted no responsibility for removing
listings, but it’s come around now.”
In addition, eBay recently instituted its PROACT outreach program to
help loss prevention and security managers set up undercover accounts,
build geo-map searches, investigate leads, and learn about other ways
to support their investigations.
“We have 2,000 people in our Fraud Investigations Team who are
responsible for responding to people who report fraud and reviewing
items kicked out by our fraud analytics,” says Paul Jones,
Washington-based director of retail partnerships at eBay.
He points out that eBay was designed to allow buyers to check potential
sellers and their histories on their own, so there are many public
search and reporting features available. “We often find that LP and
security people aren’t familiar with our advanced searches and how to
program them to automatically produce reports. They should sign up and
sell something on eBay to learn how these internal mechanisms work.”
In terms of practicalities, security staff need to focus on stolen
items resold in bulk, as law enforcement is unlikely to get involved in
smaller sell-offs. “When people are moving large numbers of stolen
goods, they’re not going to sell pieces individually on eBay,” says
Martin.
To assist in the investigations of large-scale theft, Jones says eBay
is happy to take data feeds from victimized companies — be it a simple
Excel file or a more complex program — and use internal tools to scan
the site for them.
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