Document Type
Conference Document
Date
2005
Keywords
electronic commerce, fraud, FTC, Federal Trade Commission
Disciplines
E-Commerce | Internet Law
Recommended Citation
I. MacInnes, D. Musgrave, and J. Laska (2005), “Electronic Commerce Fraud: Towards an Understanding of the Phenomenon,” Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38).
Electronic Commerce Fraud_ Towards an Understanding of the Phenom_accessible.pdf (604 kB)
Accessible PDF version
Accessible PDF version
Source
local input
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Additional Information
The objective of this paper is to determine the factors that contribute to electronic commerce fraud. We present a model that identifies five causes: the incentives of criminals, the characteristics of victims, the role of technology, the role of enforcement, and system related factors. The Internet has lowered the barriers to entry for criminal enterprises. Victims are unable to determine which sites are real and which ones are fraudulent and lack of reporting further facilitates this type of crime. The lack of enforcement, resulting from inadequate resources and laws, contributes to the lowering of entry barriers to fraudulent businesses. An analysis of FTC cases shows that most crimes are not technologically sophisticated and that greater awareness and experience with this type of schemes people will avoid being victimized.