Staring into a flat-screen monitor in Tel Aviv, Israel, a woman watches an online transaction being processed, waiting. An alert pops up on her screen rating the attempted money transfer as “probably fraudulent”. Given the available information – that was the second transaction on the account in a minute, the first from Canada, the second from Portugal – the rating is justified. The account holder is unlikely to have travelled the Atlantic in a few seconds.
The transaction is queried and the system ‘paints’ all available data relating to it – normal access details (PC details, IP address), proxy access details, area and country of origin and bank holding the account. When the (now) frustrated fraudster attempts another transaction from the same IP address but at another bank, this transaction is also queried, the system noting the IP address and ‘painting’ information relating to the new account. The fraudster uses the same machine via another IP address in an attempt to access a new account. The new IP address is also ‘painted’. “Every time a detail changes we have more factors that can be used to identify that person. It’s like a web – the more they struggle the more enmeshed they are.”
