Call to join global fraud fighters

A fraud-busting organisation is keen to attract more members from the IT community to tackle the growing problem of card-not-present fraud.

Ethoca, which allows members to pool experiences of fraud without revealing sensitive customer details, has recently been joined by dabs.com, online reseller subsidiary of BT.

Speaking to CRN, Andre Edelbrock, chief executive of Ethoca, said: “We are a global fraud fighting community and have been going since 2005. I started out in the online gaming industry, which has a significant user base.

“We were trying to figure out a way for companies such as William Hill and Ladbrokes to work together against fraudsters, without giving away vital customer data to the competition. The retail community was trying to do the same thing, so we saw the opportunity to build a company and solve the problem,” he said.

Ethoca members are given access to the firm’s database, which contains details of millions of transactions gathered from industries including online retail, IT, online gaming and gambling, and the travel industries. This allows them to check off a transaction and make an informed decision on whether to proceed.

“We share experiences not data,” Edelbrock said. “We are in advanced talks with a number of significant companies in both the retail electronics and the IT space, and are keen to see more companies join our community,” he added.

Members pay a monthly fee – which varies depending on the size of the company – to subscribe to the Ethoca service.

Paul Sharrock, IT director at dabs.com believed more firms should get in on the act.

“The more players that get together within this community, the better it will be,” he said. “We know that fraudsters often try gaming sites first, and being able to share data with companies outside the IT sector is very important.”