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Offerpal Releases Security, Fraud Prevention Suite
by Eric Caoili [PC]
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July 17, 2009
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Social media/gaming ad company Offerpal Media released OfferpalSecure, a suite of security and fraud prevention services designed to help online gaming and social web publishers combat fraudulent activity in their virtual economies.
The company notes that security experts estimate as much as 50 percent of unguarded games and networks' transactions for virtual goods and currency can be fraudlulent, especially if player-to-player transfers are supported. Some of those deceptive behaviors include fake account creation, account takeover, fraudulent offer completion, and more.
Marcus Eikenberry, founder and CEO of video game anti-fraud technologies and services company TrustWho, says that even in games without player-to-player transfers, fraud rates typically hover around 10 percent. Fraudulent activity is also blamed for damaging the user experience for users by "creating inflated prices, unfair player advantages and imbalanced economies."
Offerpal claims its tests show that OfferpalSecure can reduce publisher fraud by more than 60 percent. The security system is available for free as an integrated part of the company's offer-based payment platform, which provides various virtual currency payment options (credit cards, microtransactions, mobile payments, etc.) for online games, virtual worlds, social networks, and other web services.
Though its virtual currency monetization platform already has security controls such as IP Whitelisting and HTTPS protocols support, OfferpalSecure adds several automated fraud monitoring and alert systems. The company also complements these by employing a dedicated fraud manage team for identifying, managing, and reducing fraudulent activities.
The suite's measures uses "real-time velocity controls to detect irregular patterns in user behavior and machine fingerprinting to prevent scammers from using multiple accounts in order to game the system." It also adds hash signatures to callback URLs so publishers can verify the signatures and authenticity of callbacks with a secret key code.
"We’ve processed more than 200 million transactions since our inception in 2007," says Offerpal Media's founder and CEO Anu Shukla. "And from our learnings we’ve developed a comprehensive fraud prevention product that was designed from the ground up for online games and social applications."
"Our goal is to preserve revenues for our publishing partners, create a better, fairer gaming experience for legitimate users, and deliver high-value new customers to our advertising partners."
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