Fraudsters enjoy a summer holiday

It’s now summer on Triton.

Don’t pack your holiday gear though; the average temperature on Neptune’s icy moon, which is about 30 times further from the sun than Earth, is -235 Celsius (-391 Fahrenheit). And the atmosphere isn’t too friendly: Methane and Carbon Monoxide. Personally I think I’ll pass.

If you do plan a trip, note that summer lasts 40 years on Triton. It began 6 years ago on the Southern hemisphere, so if you take off now, you still have a chance to enjoy it.

Speaking of summer, there’s a common wisdom in online fraud: July is typically not a big ‘fraud month’. It seems like fraudsters take a time off comes July. The pattern is pretty consistent: if we compare attempted online credit card fraud in a major UK bank between June and July, we see a dip.

According to RSA eCommerce Transaction Monitoring data, in 2007, 2008 and 2009 the dip was -13%, -27%, and -11% respectively. July 2010 isn’t over, but extrapolating the data from the first 26 days of July shows the dip continues: -34% compared to June.

I checked three other major banks in UK: they all had a dip greater than -26% this July.

Strangely enough, genuine trx value is typically up in July. Maybe it’s all of the last minute summer holiday deals. But fraud always trends down in July.

I don’t know. Maybe fraudsters deserve some R&R just like the rest of us. After all, they’re working hard all year long to breach our defenses. Or maybe they’re just being nice, knowing that many people in the fraud department go for summer holidays.

Whichever the case, let us wish them a long vacation. And I think you wouldn’t mind buying them a summer holiday on Triton, right?