Online credit card fraudsters start their Christmas shopping early.

Unfortunately, card fraudsters have taken to online shopping with even more gusto than the average British consumer. Over the same period, the number of attempted fraud incidents within the online retail sector rose at an even quicker pace - up by 131%. Moreover, when criminals shop online, they tend to make more extravagant purchases. The average attempted fraudulent transaction is almost £525 compared with an average of less than £200 for genuine shoppers.

What type of products do online fraudsters favour? They are typically the very latest high-value, electronic goods and luxury goods such as mobile phones, luxury handbags and iPods as these tend to be fairly easy to sell on at a good resale value on the black market and on ebay. The phone of choice for criminals in September was the Samsung U600 -46.7% of all online sales seen by ReD for this item were fraud attempts.

“Our retailers cite the iPhone as one of the must-have products for this Christmas and at ReD, our risk analysts will monitor purchasing patterns of this item with an extra level of vigilance”. said Carl Clump, CEO of Retail Decisions. “Other current popular targets on the top of the fraudsters shopping list we are seeing at the moment are gift cards, the LG Shine Mobile, Nintendo DS Lite Consoles and the Apple iPod Video (30GB).”

Why is online crime outpacing the overall rise in transaction growth? There are a number of reasons for this. One of the key factors is that so-called bricks-and-mortar retail shops have become more secure, forcing fraudsters online. Paradoxically, the successful roll-out of Chip & Pin in 2005 closed down many opportunities for criminals to carry out illegal transactions in the UK high street, forcing them instead to try their luck at card-not-present channels, notably the internet, mail order and telephone order. At the same time, highly organized gangs share stolen card records and use technology to allow them to generate false consumer details in an automated fashion and then automate the generation of these transactions at web stores. Another development in criminals' favour is the increased availability of goods on the internet with short delivery times. This enables fraudsters to acquire a wide range of goods in as quick a time as possible before the e-tailer has the time to check the validity of the transaction.