Canadian Security Magazine

Auction site eBay takes the fight to online fraudsters

By Rosie Lombardi   

News Data Security

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.”

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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.


But Martin believes eBay could be doing more in validating where large
supplies come from to begin with. “Someone who’s selling 300 brand-name
sweatshirts should be able to produce legitimate receipts showing where
they were purchased if they were challenged by eBay.”

Even so, eBay does more in co-operating with law enforcement than other
sites if credible evidence is provided, says Jones. The company offers
training programs to help police investigate crime on its site, and has
trained about 500 officers in Canada over the past five years. “We have
senior officials on the ground in Asia, Rumania, Korea and other
places, and supports in place so police don’t get lost in the system.”

The company also has policies in place to cut through red tape in
investigations. “Unlike other e-commerce companies, eBay is one of the
only ones that provides law enforcement with information on a simple
request instead of requiring a subpoena. This is stated in our privacy
policy.”

But eBay can only co-operate to the extent that local privacy laws in
various jurisdictions permit them to disclose information about sellers
and buyers, he adds.

This is a major stumbling block. Privacy laws are very fragmented
across states in the U.S., and provinces such as Ontario have strong
privacy regulations, so a victimized Canadian company looking to get
information will face difficulties, says Martin. “It all depends on the
origin of the person selling the stolen product. And getting law
enforcement agencies to co-operate across jurisdictions is also
difficult.”

Inventory control
Although it may seem an impossible task to track thieves online who can
change their identities and e-mail addresses in a flash, Navarro says
they nevertheless have consistent patterns. “They tend to use the same
verbiage and pictures in their postings. We often find them popping up
repeatedly under different names and e-mails, but we can still identify
them because the rest of the posting is exactly the same.”

But even the best online sleuthing will be stymied if companies can’t
prove the items being resold on eBay were stolen from them, says
Martin. “Inventory control is the start and end of it. The first thing
police will ask is, ”˜How do you know those items are yours?’ Being able
to identify the items and show proof of loss is paramount.”

If a shipment of items is stolen from a truck, it’s important that
companies have a physical inventory of the actual items that were
loaded on the truck, he says. “So if the items show up eBay, security
people can buy one and validate it came from stolen shipment.”

This is where many retailers and manufacturers fall down, he says.
Companies need to get their own house in order before they can
successfully investigate online fraud. But it takes time and money to
log items properly so they can be tracked, and many companies are
cutting back in these areas.

“This is particularly true in retail due to their small margins. It’s
taken years for the industry to finally accept the fact it needs to put
EAS (electronic article surveillance) tags on merchandise so it doesn’t
unlawfully walk out the front door. But there are no beeps or EAS
readers for stuff that goes out the back door.”


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