Ghana, Nigeria said to make Africa world’s number one online fraud continent

Africa has emerged as the number one continent identified for online fraud during the year 2012, according to iovation, a US company that protects online businesses from fraud and abuse.

In a report released February 21, 2013, iovation’s software found that Africa had the highest rate of online fraud when compared to all other continents with highest percentages from Nigeria and Ghana.

Accordingly “seven percent of all transactions conducted were fraudulent,” said iovation.
Africa was followed by Asia (5% of all transactions fraudulent), South America (4% fraudulent), Europe (2% fraudulent) and North America (1% fraudulent).

Last year January 31, 2012, the company ranked Ghana ahead of Nigeria in the top online fraud transactions list worldwide. It later indicated that most activities of cyber crime are conducted at 1:00am local time (5pm Pacific Standard Time) in Ghana every day in the year 2011.

According to iovation, the majority of fraudulent transactions originating from Africa targeted “online dating and retail websites”.

It added that the continent’s top offenses included credit card fraud, identity theft, profile misrepresentation, and online scams and solicitations

“While fraud origins are regionally diverse, these geographies were unified in the kinds of fraud cybercriminals attempted,” said Scott Waddell, Chief Technology Officer at iovation.

Billions of online transactions processed with the company’s device, ReputationManager 360, were analyzed for geographic trends.

iovation says many of the fraudsters attempted to “mask their true location” and bypass fraud prevention processes by using web proxies.

By Ekow Quandzie