If you have an ecommerce store, you may be wondering how to make your website secure. Ecommerce fraud scares customers as well business owners. Hence, ecommerce fraud prevention must be your top priority.
With US ecommerce sales reaching around $908.73 billion, these increased ecommerce sales may lead to increased ecommerce fraud. In fact, some predict that financial loss due to online fraud activities will jump from $17.5 billion to $20 billion.
Still, there are specific ways through which you can prevent such ecommerce frauds. In addition, there are many anti-fraud tools available that you can avail and make your platform safe.
Keep reading to learn about ecommerce fraud prevention, and how you can keep your online store safe.
Signs You’re a Victim of Ecommerce Fraud
You must know the red flags that can help you understand the tactics criminals use. Here are some warning signs that you should watch for.
- Different shipping and billing addresses are used in cases of identity theft or triangulation fraud. Hence it would help if you stay alert.
- Most of the time, the fraudsters will order several times, and you must check the customer details before delivering goods to them.
- Another strategy these scammers try is to order several things to the same address while using different cards. If something like this happens, you must ask for a bank transfer to ensure that no scam can happen once the shipment is delivered.
- Large orders should be a red flag, too, as scammers try to get an enormous reward.
- You must also observe declined transactions. Once or twice is okay, but if it happens again and again, it could mean that someone is trying to access sensitive data they don't have permission for.
Types of Ecommerce Fraud
There are many types of fraud that can occur, including the following.
Email Account Phishing
Email account phishing is the oldest trick in the book. The scammer sends you an email that requires sensitive information. Never open such links or give any sensitive information to any stranger. Nowadays, many people receive emails about a shipment that they never ordered and ask for their input. Hence, it would be best if you stay vigilant.
Identity Theft
If someone isn't aware of such scams and gives their information to these scammers, it results in identity theft. The scammer will buy whatever they like, and you will be the one paying for it. It harms the retailer as the products become old or used; hence, the retailer loses. The credit card company, most of the time, returns the money to the victim, but still, it is a frustrating procedure.
Chargeback Fraud
Chargeback fraud is excruciatingly simple, yet it causes a significant financial loss to the store. What happens in this scam is that a scammer buys a lot of things from your ecommerce website, and once the products are shipped, they cancel the payment. It can also happen by claiming that the delivery never got to them. All in all, the business owner has to bear the loss and investigate it.
Credit Card Fraud
This includes all the techniques through which an individual can commit fraud by using a credit or debit card. For example, a scammer uses a stolen credit card to make purchases from an ecommerce website. It can result in considerable financial losses if the scammer gets away with it. Hence an ecommerce store must have straightforward policies that can tackle such situations.
5 Simple Ecommerce Fraud Prevention Techniques
Learn how to prevent website fraud from happening. Here we elaborate on some ecommerce fraud prevention techniques.
PCI Compliance
PCI compliance is essential. PCI SSC is known as Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council. It is a council formed by the biggest credit card brands to make policies to prevent scams from happening. But, of course, you can always opt for secure payment gateways to avoid online store fraud.
2. AVS and CVV
AVS stands for Address Verification Services, and CVV stands for Card Verification Value. These verification values provide standard security measures. AVS tends to ensure that the billing address mentioned matches the billing address written on the file. With the help of CVV, there is a lesser chance of being scammed. Hence it would help to ask for both of these values before delivering the shipment to an individual.
3. Required Signature on Delivery
Another simple yet effective ecommerce fraud prevention practice is the requirement of a signature on delivery. It helps in the prevention of several ecommerce scams, such as identity theft. Although this will cost you a bit more, it will make your deliveries safe and more secure.
4. Use HTTPS for Better Security
HTTPS provides an extra security layer to the website that isn't included in HTTP. So it would be best if you chose HTTPS to avoid hackers from entering your system. Another advantage of using HTTPS is that it also helps in SEO for ecommerce, as most of the search engines prefer websites with HTTPS, among others.
5. Safer Passwords
At least as an ecommerce store owner, you must share the burden of security with your customers. Therefore, you need to have a standard requirement for creating passwords so that hackers can't access them. Right now, the industry standard for a secure and robust password is eight characters, one capital letter, and one special character. Also, you can opt for a randomly generated password that is very difficult to hack.
3 Longer Term Ecommerce Fraud Prevention Techniques
Above, we discussed some ways you can prevent fraud from happening at the moment. However, these long term ways will help you in the prevention of online store fraud. These solutions will take time, but they will provide excellent security to your ecommerce websites.
Training Customer Support for Ecommerce Fraud Prevention
Ecommerce customer service plays a critical role in ecommerce fraud protection. It helps in identifying ecommerce frauds that can hurt your business. You must always train your staff about the scams that may happen so that they make sure to double check all orders before dispatching them. Most scammers target customer representatives, so the staff must have some anti-fraud training workshops.
2. Regular and Consistent Site Security Audits
If you are keen to discover flaws in your security system, you need to conduct security audits regularly. It will help in highlighting improvement areas to secure your website.
You need to observe the following consistently:
- Regularly update the shopping cart software and plugins.
- Check if your SSL certificate is working or not.
- Check whether your ecommerce store is PCI compliant.
- Always back up the online store.
- Use stronger passwords for admin accounts.
- Use excellent and safe hosting services.
- Remove all broken links and inactive plugins.
3. Avoid Collecting Too Much Sensitive Customer Data
Another way to protect your store and customers' information is to collect only the necessary information. Unnecessary collection of details should be avoided so that even if a hacker enters your system, he won't have anything significant to steal.
Ecommerce Fraud Prevention Tools
Here are a few ecommerce fraud prevention tools that you can use to protect your ecommerce website from threats.
- Subuno
- Riskified
- Fraudlabs Pro
- Dupzapper
- Kount
Good Hosts Keep Your Ecommerce Store Safe
In the end, we would tell you to always look out for such frauds and keep your websites secure. Having a secure host for your ecommerce store can help too. If you're looking for a highly secure host, consider Nexcess.
Nexcess offers fully managed WooCommerce hosting to keep your store secure, fast, and scalable.
All plans come with premium plugins to help harden your WordPress site's security and keep your data safe.
Furthermore, regular night audits identify the weak areas in your system and will work to strengthen them.
And award-winning customer support means we’ve always got your back — 24/7/365.
Check out our fully managed WooCommerce hosting plans to get started today.
