SECURITY
Gardai and eBay join forces to fight fraud
29-08-2005
by
EBay.ie is teaming up with the Irish law enforcers to explore new ways to fight credit card fraud, as criminals increasingly focus on internet and phone channels.
Representatives of eBay met with the Garda Bureau of Investigation and the Garda Hi-Tech Crime Unit last week, to introduce Irish law enforcement officials to the eBay and PayPal sites and to demonstrate how eBay and PayPal can co-operate with the Gardai to fight online crime.
The meeting was attended by more than 20 detectives from the Garda Siochana and by the head of eBay's fraud investigation team in Ireland, Jennifer Stephenson. The meeting was also attended by John Needham, a former Scotland Yard detective who spent 30 years in the British police before joining eBay as their investigations manager.
EBay said that the aim of the meeting was to "develop good working relationships with key Garda personnel," and to "brief Gardai on how to contact eBay, what information eBay can provide them, how best to leverage eBay as an investigative resource."
According to Una Dillon, head of card services at the Irish Payment Services, merchants are reporting increasing levels of credit card fraud. She also said that the new chip and PIN technology makes it harder to carry out fraudulent transactions when the card is present and as a result, criminals are focusing their attentions on the card-not-present channels, such as the phone and the internet.
The normal procedure for people whose credit card details have been stolen online is to report the loss to the Gardai and to their bank. eBay.ie says that it would also like people to report these instances to them, since they want to keep track of fraudulent transactions on their site.
Incidences of fraud would not only cover credit card fraud, but also goods that were promised, but not delivered, or other fraudulent transactions that were carried out by users of eBay's site.
According to IPSO's Dillon, online credit card fraud accounts for a relatively small amount of overall credit fraud losses in Ireland. The latest figures, which date back to 2003, showed that internet fraud accounted for less than one percent of all fraud losses. Identity theft -- which includes not just phishing and Trojan viruses, but also physical bin-raiding -- was responsible for around EUR1 million of credit card fraud in 2004.
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