January to June 2011, £16.9m was lost in online banking fraud for UK-issued cards, down from £24.9m in the same period last year, the payments industry trade body said in a statement on Wednesday (PDF). These figures compare favourably to £39m lost between January and June 2009.
Increased computer security awareness from customers, plus banks' use of fraud detection software, have led to this fall, said the UK Cards Association (UKCA). Many banks use behavioural anomaly software that charts suspicious activity on a card.
While losses have fallen, the number of phishing websites targeting UK users has sharply increased. From January to June 2007, UKCA logged 7,224 such websites. Phishing websites frequently get taken down, yet in the same period in 2011 the number had increased to 37,198.
Low-tech card crime such as cheque fraud has grown. Nevertheless, in general, losses from high-tech fraud have been falling, said UKCA. In the half year from the beginning of 2011, internet, phone and card-not present fraud was £109.2m, down year-on-year from £118.2m. In 2008, from January to June, loss from this type of fraud was £163.9m.
The number of cases of card fraud has also been falling since 2008, according to the latest UKCA figures. While no half yearly incident figures were available for 2011, a UKCA spokesman told ZDNet UK on Thursday, yearly figures are falling. In 2010, there were 0.96 million card fraud incidents, compared with 1.13 million cases in 2009 and 1.4 million in 2008.
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