Stolen goods are being traded and sold on Facebook’s dozens of cybercriminal marketplaces, according to

The security firm has recently tracked groups on marketplaces with a total of 385,000 members who promise to carry out ‘questionable cyber dirty deeds’. Some of these criminal services include credit card/bank information, account/login credentials and spamming tools.

Cisco Talos’s research team was surprised by how easy it was to locate the criminal online marketplaces. The research team discovered multiple posts where credit card numbers, CVV’s and even identification documents were offered. Illegal results turned up by simple search terms on Facebook, such as ‘CVV’, ‘spam’, or ‘carding’.

Facebook pages deleted

Reporting abuse regarding these groups makes Facebook take them down. However, after trying this tactic, Cisco Talos discovered that only some marketplaces were removed immediately while in other groups only specific posts were deleted. After directly seeking contact with Facebook’s security team, the majority of the criminal groups were deleted. According to Cisco Talos, these criminal marketplaces continue to emerge even after publishing their research results. This points out the existing gap between rising levels of online crime and the lack of fraud regulation.

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There was a slight dip in the growth of US e-commerce retail in 2018. Of the domestic online retail sales in 2018 (517 billion dollars), 40% went to Amazon. Competing and growing business is therefore hard for smaller US e-commerce retailers. Selling products on Amazon and other marketplaces in addition to selling in their online shop is one option. Another option, which is being ignored by many retailers, is cross-border e-commerce.

Only 36% of the e-commerce merchants in the US currently sell abroad, even though cross-border sales are an opportunity to grow. Even though the rates of cross-border sales are low, the US is the second largest destination for international online shoppers. According to PaymentsSource, growth rates for cross-border sales vary from 10% in the US to 30% in Europe over the upcoming years. The global B2C cross border e-commerce market is expected to be valued at 1 trillion dollars next year.

Fraud holds sellers back

Concerns about fraud are holding e-commerce sellers back. Understanding the risks and potential rewards is the key to confidently selling into other markets.

Being worried about fraud is a valid reason for e-commerce merchants. The ‘card-not-present’ fraud is growing very fast right now. The expected cost for the global e-commerce industry is 130 billion dollars up to 2023. However, blocking or rejecting most international orders is costing the retailers good orders.

A study shows that identity spoofing and device spoofing fraud among cross-border orders were 15-22% more likely than among domestic orders. However, retailers have rejected 69% more cross border orders due to fraud concerns. Some merchants automatically reject orders from specific high-risk countries.

According to the US Payments Forum, the CNP fraud rate is above the global average. It is unlikely that US retailers will stop their domestic sales as they feel more comfortable managing those risks. Retailers can plan their e-commerce expansion carefully, e.g. by detailed planning of their payment methods, fraud prevention practices, and customer outreach for order validation. This can increase sales while diminishing the risks of cross border selling.

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The partnership creates a single platform capable of managing every type of e-commerce fraud facilitated by Sift Science. Acapture’s in-house global acquiring solutions offer access to payment data and insights into the payments journey of the end consumer. This data paired up with Sift Science’s cutting-edge machine learning models make the ultimate fraud management solution to protect merchants in the fast-paced fraud landscape.

“We’re delighted to have Sift Science as our trusted partner for our long-term mission to help merchants to fight fraud and deliver a better consumer experience,” said Rudolf Booker, Acapture CEO. “By working together, we are confident that the practical expertise in fraud management and machine learning of Sift Science combined with the complete insight into the entire transaction flow enabled by Acapture positions us as merchants’ first choice for fraud management”.

“Acapture’s data and our machine learning models will drive business growth by reducing fraud, false positives, and operational costs,” said Jason Tan, Sift Science CEO. “Combining our proven technology platforms, merchants automatically know who’s trustworthy and risky. They no longer need to make a tradeoff between protecting and growing their business.”

E-commerce fraud has always been merchants’ top of mind challenge that keeps on disrupting them from their core business, preventing them from making the most out of their incoming traffic. Due to the limitations on rule-based applications, many genuine transactions are rejected, resulting in legitimate customers being disappointed by their shopping experience. This rigid fraud prevention approach not only has a negative impact on conversion rates but also on the brand’s reputation especially nowadays, with social media platforms giving consumers a powerful voice.  Acapture’s partnership with Sift Science aims to reduce the number of genuine customers being blocked and optimize conversions using customized, data-enriched machine learning models. Merchants can ultimately focus on scaling-up their business and not be distracted by fraud.

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