Cyber Criminals Target Online Gambling Sites
Do you gamble online? Millions outside the U.S. do and love it. My
gaming experience consists of online Solitaire and Tetris, which shows
you how adventurous I am. But for those who gamble online, there can be
significant risks.
The same cyber criminals targeting banks and retailers working hard
to collect and sell stolen personal data, including names, addresses,
Social Security numbers, and credit card details, are using those stolen
identities to win big in defrauding online gambling sites.
And as more people turn to online poker, bingo, sportsbooks, and
betting sites, cyber criminals are developing more sophisticated ways to
take advantage of legitimate players and the gambling sites themselves.
Financial fraud such as chargebacks and money laundering are major
issues for gambling operators, not to mention player collusion and bonus
abuse. Plus, the operators have the responsibility of keeping problem
gamblers (self-excluders) from re-entering their sites.
Bonus incentives, as explained in this case study on WagerWorks,
are offered to attract new players to games and to increase overall
play time, but these incentives also attract the attention of cyber
criminals since they can set up multiple accounts under stolen
identities, and take advantage of the free money offered for each new
account.
Gambling sites, like banks and retailers, are forced to deal with a
wide spectrum of Internet crimes and other in-game abuses that cost the
industry hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud losses each year.
Many gambling sites have increased efforts to detect suspicious
players, but Internet-savvy criminals have learned to mask their true
identities, changing account information to circumvent conventional
methods of fraud detection.
It is increasingly necessary for online casinos to deploy more
effective solutions, which analyzes information beyond that which is
supplied by users. By starting the fraud detection process with a device
reputation check from companies like Oregon-based iovation Inc.,
gambling sites can stop problem players within a fraction of a second
and avoid further checks and fees when the device is known to be
associated with fraud. According to Chrystian Terry, Director of Casino
Operations at WagerWorks, “iovation helped us shut down 20
sophisticated rings. Imagine the lifetime value of bonuses on nearly 300
accounts – that’s tens of thousands of pounds! The service paid for
itself on the first day.”
At the recent Caribbean Gaming Show and Conference in Santo Domingo,
Max Anhoury, Vice President of Global Sales at iovation, shared in his
presentation to attendees that 350,000 fraudulent attempts within gambling sites
alone have been reported and shared in their global knowledge base in
the last 12 months. And while iovation’s database of half a billion
devices typically sees about 2% of devices within most industries
associated with negative behavior, within the online gambling industry,
that number increases to 5% of devices associated with fraud. That’s
approximately 500,000 “known” unique devices trying to defraud gambling
sites. Sites armed with device reputation know when they are on their
sites and can keep them out.
The online casino industry has an opportunity to work in tandem with
merchants, banks, travel sites and even shipping companies to share data
that helps pinpoint the devices responsible for fraudulent activity.
Shared device reputation intelligence makes this possible for the first
time.
Robert Siciliano, personal security and identity theft expert contributor to
iovation, discusses
Social Security Numbers as National IDs on Fox News.
(Disclosures)
