Trust: A Rare Commodity Online

People lie when they set up online dating profiles, they lie when they put up fake social media profiles, and they lie to the innocent victims of their scams. Banks and retailers know better than anyone that people lie. There are countless scenarios and justifications, but people who lie invariably do it in order to get something. In general, we strive to be a kind and civil species. We trust by default. We want to be helpful and accommodating. We don’t want to believe that people lie, but they do. Dishonesty poses a challenge to banks and retailers in the form of theft. Theft is a big problem on the Internet, and any online business knows that they can’t afford to trust you, regardless of how honest you may be. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council recently instructed both retailers and banks to enhance their security procedures, in response to the increasingly creative lies concocted by scammers. One of those FFIEC recommendations involves incorporating complex device identification. This means that banks and retailers should adopt technology that actually recognizes and analyzes the PCs, smartphones, and tablets being used to access their websites. Once the device is identified, knowing the device’s reputation is where it really gets interesting. Is it acting suspicious or is it a known device that has been used in a fraud ring, in money laundering, or has been attempting account takeovers? Knowing the device’s reputation lets businesses know ahead of time who they can trust online. Robert Siciliano, personal security and identity theft expert contributor to iovation, discusses credit card fraud on NBC Boston. Disclosures