Nigeria Is Still #1 Riskiest Country For Online Fraud Unchallenged

28 Jan 2008 14:00 Africa/Lagos

"Certainly Nigeria's persistent notoriety among eCommerce merchants is enhanced by the ubiquitous 'Nigerian Scam' letters," said Doug Schwegman, CyberSource director of customer and market intelligence. "Russia dropping off the list this year may simply mean merchants have given up shipping even digital products to that country due to negative outcomes in the past. But the real message of these findings is that fraud remains a significant issue in the lives of eCommerce merchants. We do see increasing popularity of IP Geolocation, a tool that gives merchants information on the location of an internet-connected computer based on its internet protocol address. But as always, we remind merchants that no one tool is a silver anti-fraud bullet -- that combinations of tools work best to root out cybercrime."


NYC Loses Title to Miami - No Longer 'Riskiest City' for Online Fraud

CyberSource annual survey: Miami now #1 riskiest city for eCommerce in U.S.; Nigeria's hold on #1 riskiest country unchallenged

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Jan. 28 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new survey, the Big Apple is no longer the U.S. city eCommerce merchants fear most. That dubious distinction now belongs to Miami. In the survey, an annual poll of online merchants commissioned by CyberSource Corporation (NASDAQ:CYBS) , merchants were asked "What single major U.S. or Canadian city presented the highest risk of online fraud?" No city garnered a majority of the votes, but this year Miami surpassed New York City. Runners up were Los Angeles and Chicago. Other cities receiving votes included Detroit, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.


(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990513/CYBRSOURCELOGO)


In the "Riskiest Country" category, Nigeria easily retained its position as number one, with more than three times the votes of the next country. Runners up were the UK in second place, Ghana in third, Indonesia in fourth, and China in fifth. Russia, which had been among the leaders in the two prior years of the survey's history, fell out of the rankings for the first time.


"Certainly Nigeria's persistent notoriety among eCommerce merchants is enhanced by the ubiquitous 'Nigerian Scam' letters," said Doug Schwegman, CyberSource director of customer and market intelligence. "Russia dropping off the list this year may simply mean merchants have given up shipping even digital products to that country due to negative outcomes in the past. But the real message of these findings is that fraud remains a significant issue in the lives of eCommerce merchants. We do see increasing popularity of IP Geolocation, a tool that gives merchants information on the location of an internet-connected computer based on its internet protocol address. But as always, we remind merchants that no one tool is a silver anti-fraud bullet -- that combinations of tools work best to root out cybercrime."


2007 results: "Highest risk" areas for eCommerce:

North American cities
Miami 10% of mentions (up from 7% the year before)
NYC 8% (down from 9%)
Los Angeles 3% (down from 6%)

Countries
Nigeria 27% of mentions (down from 31%)
UK 8% (up from 6%)
Ghana 7% (up from 4%)
Indonesia 6% (same as last year)
China 5% (up from 3%)

Question/Survey details

The city and country questions were part of a larger survey, the Ninth Annual CyberSource Fraud Survey, commissioned by CyberSource Corporation and undertaken by Mindwave Research. The survey was fielded September 13, 2007 through October 1, 2007 and yielded 318 qualified and complete responses from U.S. and Canadian eCommerce merchants. The sample was drawn from a database of companies involved in electronic commerce activities. Incentive to respondents included a summary of the research.


To obtain a copy of the survey results -- for journalists: call or email Bruce Frymire (650-965-6042, bfrymire@cybersource.com). For all others: please visit http://www.cybersource.com/fraudreport/


About CyberSource


CyberSource Corporation is a leading provider of electronic payment and risk management solutions. CyberSource solutions enable electronic payment processing for Web, call center, and POS environments. CyberSource also offers industry leading risk management solutions for merchants accepting card-not-present transactions. CyberSource Professional Services designs, integrates, and optimizes commerce transaction processing systems. Over 220,000 businesses use CyberSource solutions, including half the companies comprising the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and has sales and service offices in Japan, the United Kingdom, and other locations in the United States including Bellevue, Washington and American Fork, Utah. For more information on CyberSource please visit http://www.cybersource.com/ or email info@cybersource.com. For more information on Authorize.Net small business solutions, please visit http://www.authorize.net/ or email sales@authorize.net.


(C) 2008 CyberSource Corporation. All rights reserved. CyberSource is a registered trademark in the U.S. and other countries. Authorize.Net is a registered trademark in the U.S. All other brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.


Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990513/CYBRSOURCELOGO
AP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/
PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com
Source: CyberSource

CONTACT: Bruce Frymire of CyberSource, +1-650-965-6042,
bfrymire@cybersource.com


Web site: http://www.cybersource.com/
http://www.authorize.net/