Small Online Companies lose out to call centre crime

Andrew Goodwill, Managing Director of anti-fraud specialists Early Warning, is calling for all UK corporations to bring their overseas call centres home to the UK, so the data handled by these call centres can be governed by UK data protection laws.

“For too long”, he says, “big business has saved money by going off-shore, whilst British ecommerce traders are losing heavily from the Card Not Present fraud that results from stolen data ”.

It is not always appreciated that on-line merchants – many of them small and vulnerable – are responsible to the banks and other financial institutions for the full cost of the fraud they suffer. Call centre crime overseas produces real difficulties here in the UK.

As well as creating the CNP losses, the situation has other implications. Through the scale of the trade in low cost, high value data (as low as £8 per record is quoted), the call centres are probably indirectly funding serious crime like drugs and terrorism.

Andrew Goodwill added: “So far, the banks themselves and the call centre companies have largely been indifferent to the seriousness of the problem. It is time big business took a much more responsible stance”.