Study: P.R. at high risk for shipping, billing fraud
Puerto Rico has a higher-than-average exposure to shipping and billing fraud attacks.
Puerto Rico is among seven U.S. jurisdictions with a higher-than-average rank for shipping and billing fraud attacks, according to a recently released study by global information services company Experian.
The commonwealth is on par with Florida, Oregon, Delaware, California, New York, Georgia and Nevada in terms of risk, which indicates that attackers are targeting consumers equally in the higher-risk states while leveraging addresses from both higher- and lower-risk states to ship and receive fraudulent merchandise.
Many of the higher-risk states are located near a large port-of-entry city, including Miami; Portland, Ore.; and Washington, D.C., perhaps allowing criminals to move stolen goods more effectively, Experian said. All three cities are ranked among the riskiest cities for both measures of fraud attacks.
Experian’s e-commerce attack rate data and rankings show that assessing where fraud occurs is an important layer of verification when performing real-time risk assessments for e-commerce. There were more than 13 million fraud victims in 2015.
“Fraud follows the path of least resistance. With more shipping and billing options available to create a better customer experience, criminals attempt to exploit any added convenience,” said Adam Fingersh, Experian general manager and senior vice president of Fraud & Identity Solutions.
“E-commerce fraud is not confined to larger cities since fraudsters can ship items anywhere. With the switch to chip enabled credit card transactions, and possible growth of card-not-present fraud, our fraud solutions help online businesses monitor their riskiest locations to prevent losses both in dollars and reputation in the near term,” he said.
Florida is the overall riskiest state for billing fraud, followed by Delaware; Washington, D.C.; Oregon and California. Delaware is the overall riskiest state for shipping fraud, followed by Oregon, Florida, California and Nevada.
Experian analyzed millions of e-commerce transactions to calculate the e-commerce attack rates using “bad transactions” in relation to the total number of transactions for the 2015 calendar year.
