This article was taken from the February 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
According to CyberSource Corporation, one per cent of online revenues in 2012 was lost to fraud -- that's £2.17 billion globally. Pat Phelan is cofounder of Cork-based company Trustev, which uses social and behavioural data to detect fraud. Phelan explains his real-time strategies.
IP addresses
Triangulate the addresses. Does the IP address match the delivery address? Does the browser ID match the IP and the device address?
Date of birth
To spot a fake on Facebook, Trustev starts with your birthday. "It's a direct relationship to your friends'," Phelan says. Your real friends' ages tend to correlate.
Someone tweeting at 3pm and immediately getting five replies from bots is a giveaway. "Fake social-media identities are very patterned. Chaos indicates a real person."
Browser
Proxies and VPNs arouse suspicions. Trustev also checks the browser: "Are you running IE9, Safari or Chrome? If it's IE9, why does your computer have 20 Chrome extensions?"
Behaviour
Real shoppers browse a site before buying. Frauds typically go from landing on a site to check-out in five clicks: "Their speed is forward, forward, forward."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
