
Adding to these concerns, the latest trends signal an increase in the complexity of scams that elude even savvy consumers and corporate fraud departments.
These include rerouting schemes, which taka advantage of the fact that during the holidays, organisations are more lenient about shipping to alternate names and addresses, since this is the most common purchase pattern at this time of year.
Other scams include new account creation using stolen info - once a new account is established on an online merchant's site, items are purchased to be shipped as gifts exploiting holiday patterns and leniency so the mailing address need not match the card holders. And fraudulent gift cards - where crooks load gift cards with funds from the victim's card and shop freely either online or at the actual store.
"Most studies show that this year's online shoppers expect their transactions to be protected by banks and online merchants," said Eisen. "This is quite concerning to me, because there are many financial institutions and online merchants who are under prepared for current fraud schemes."