Internet Security | News

Iovation Names Top 10 Most Trusted Universities for Online Activity

An analysis of online transactions highlights schools with the lowest fraud rates.

• By Rhea Kelly
• 06/08/12

The University of California, San Francisco tops a list of the most trusted US universities for online transactions, released this week from online fraud protection company Iovation. The vendor analyzed online activity such as credit applications and e-commerce purchases to determine the top 10 institutions with the lowest fraud rates. The most trusted schools:

1. University of California, San Francisco
2. Columbia University
3. Cornell University
4. University of Texas
5. University of Chicago
6. University of California, Los Angeles
7. Northwestern University
8. Texas A&M University
9. University of Utah
10. University of Virginia

Iovation used its fraud management solution, ReputationManager 360, to examine schools' online activity over the past six months. It studied transactions from nearly one billion devices, from computers to tablets to mobile phones, to determine if a transaction was originating from a university and if so, whether or not it was fraudulent. For the institutions that made the top-10 list, 0.18 percent of all transactions were found to be fraudulent, compared to an overall rate of 0.8 percent among schools worldwide.

Transactions deemed fraudulent by Iovation include:

• Account takeovers/hijacking: Account takeovers happen when a criminal tries to use another person's account by gathering a victim's password information or personal info.
• Auction fraud: In an online auction scheme, a fraudster uses a phony auction to collect a victim's payment information.
• Card not present fraud: The unauthorized use of a credit or debit card number, the security code printed on the card (if required by the merchant), and the cardholder's address details to purchase products or services in a non-face-to-face setting.
• Credit card fraud: The use of a fake or stolen credit card, often to create multiple accounts or transactions.
• Friendly fraud: Any transaction, contested by a customer, where the merchant suspects that the customer or a personal associate (such as a child or spouse) legitimately authorized the transaction in question.
• Harassment/bullying: When a user abuses or harasses another customer with undesirable language, threats, or unwanted advances. This is often found on social networking and/or online dating sites.
• Phishing/identity theft: The attempt to illegitimately acquire personal information through phishing, keystroke logging, fake business websites, and other methods.
• Profile misrepresentation: When a user posts inaccurate information in his profile and/or uses bogus profile photos (most often found on social networking or online dating sites).
• Spamming: Sending unsolicited bulk messages via e-mail, instant message, post on a social network, etc., to promote products, websites, or companies.