William Hill stacks the odds against net fraudsters

The UK's second largest betting group William Hill is set to crack down on internet fraudsters by pre-empting illegal transactions on its website.

William Hill has signed up specialist software provider TrustMarque to cut off fraudsters before any cash is paid out. Something the bookie hopes will save it thousands of pounds every year.

The company's tax-free website, run from the sunny Caribbean island of Antigua, has proved highly popular with British betters, but has opened up the 70-year old firm to unprecedented levels of fraud.

According to Ian Feather, risk manager at William Hill, it's a serious threat. "We are very aware of it and very switched on. It's not got out of hand so far, but we want to stay ahead of the game," he said.

Trustmarque's software, RiskGuardian, runs every individual online transaction against 53 separate checks, including time, IP address, delivery address, credit card origin and email. The transaction is given a risk score from zero to 100.

A score at the bottom of the scale is considered very safe, but those nearer the top of the chart are marked as untrustworthy and can be refused by the company.

Developing a fraud model for the gaming industry was a challenge for the software firm. "There are lots of very clever people all over the world who at the click of a button can try to create a fraudulent transaction," said Peter Angell, senior VP at Trustmarque.

"It can be anyone from an experienced Russian hacker to a regular British punter who loses money and then panics. We have to cover all aspects," Angell added.

William Hill has not yet decided what threshold to set for refusing a transaction. "It's one thing stopping fraud but at the same time we are a business and we don't want to reject good transaction," said Feather.

In March, the Association of Payment Clearing Services (APACS) said credit card losses for 2000 were up to £292.6m - £57m of which came from card-not-present transactions.