2009 Internet Crime Complaints Up 22.3%

From 01-01-09 to 12-31-09, internet crime complaints were up 22.3% compared to the same period in 2008.

The complaints totaled $559.7 million lost with the median loss of $575.

Click here to read the entire report.

OTA Publishes 2010 Online Safety Honor Roll Citing Adoption of Consumer Protection Best Practices

8% of the Leading Companies Make the Grade

Washington, DC – April 22, 2010 – The majority of consumer websites remain vulnerable to online fraud, even as growing numbers of businesses deploy online safety measures, according to a new survey announced today by the Online Trust Alliance.

The annual survey of best practices to help protect consumers from the onslaught of forged email, phishing sites and malware found of the 1,200 companies analyzed, only 113 qualified to be named to the OTA Online Safety 2010 Honor Roll. The survey examined 1,200 domains and analyzed 500 million email messages purporting to come from the Fortune 500, Internet Retail 500, top 100 financial Institutions in North America and consumer facing federal government web sites. Sites were evaluated based on their usage of email authentication standards and Extended Validation SSL Certificates (EV SSL) and the presence of malware.

While 92% of the companies failed to adopt these best practices, 14% Internet Retail 500, 13% of the top 100 financial institutions and 6% of the Fortune 500 passed. Only 3% of the top consumer facing government sites made the grade, while 29% of OTA members walked the talk, demonstrating their commitment and leadership to locking out online fraud.

“Security has always been a top priority for PayPal, and we appreciate OTA's acknowledgement of our efforts to provide millions of customers around the world with a safer online payment service," said Michael Barrett, chief information security officer of PayPal. “We support OTA's efforts to drive industry adoption of standards that make the Internet safer for consumers and look forward to continued collaboration."

2010 Honor Roll Report

Appendix & Honor Roll Company Listing

Highlights:

8% (113 companies) earned entry into the OTA 2010 Online Safety Honor Roll, for their adoption of EV SSL Certificates, one or more forms of email authentication and successful scan for malware.

Over 26% of the Internet Retail 500 and top 100 financial services companies have adopted EV SSL certificates.

Worldwide growth of EV SSL certificates has exceeded 90%, growing to 23,000 deployments.

26% of leading financial institutions (FIs) have adopted EV SSL, and 51% adopted email authentication, a growth of 13% in one year, yet only 13% have adopted both recommendations.

OTA members lead in embracing best practices with over 98% adopting email authentication and nearly 32% adopting EV SSL.

14% of the Internet Retail 500 and 13% of the Top 100 FIs have adopted both email authentication and EV SSL certificates.

The largest retailers and businesses continue to show the highest level of adoption of email authentication with 76% of the Internet Retail 100 and 54% of the IR 500.

Government agencies adoption of email authentication remains stagnant at 32%, while over 60% of their sites and/or email have been spoofed in the past four months.

“While major corporations, banks, governmental agencies and industry working groups talk about best practices, the majority are failing to adopt, risking demands for added regulations,” said Craig Spiezle, Executive Director and President of the OTA.

OTA has recognized several “North Stars,” organizations demonstrating commitment to best practices, industry collaboration and consumer education. Leaders include Apple Computer, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration, Charles Schwab, Bank of America, eBay, Microsoft and PayPal.

“These organizations are to be commended for their security and privacy leadership and commitment to self-regulations, helping drive others to do the same,” Mr. Spiezle said. “Not only do their consumers benefit, but so do their employees and stockholders.”

OTA is calling on all consumer financial institutions, commerce sites and consumer facing governmental agencies to implement EV SSL certificates, email authentication and complete daily site scans for malware and vulnerabilities by September 1, 2010. It the belief those brands who do so, will increase consumer protection and trust while demonstrating a commitment to self regulation.

Updates to this report will be shared at the Online Trust & Cybersecurity Forum at Georgetown University on September 22-24, 2010.

https://otalliance.org/dc.html

* Percentage adjusted for companies who are on one or more list.

Midnight Eclipse Collection By Coleman

We have been adding pieces from the Midnight Eclipse Collection created by Black Hills Gold by Coleman.

We hope you will watch our stores for more listings from this collection to be added soon.

Bonanzle Rocks! Investors Drop $1 Million For Advancement Of The Site

Bonanzle has a lot to be proud of and excited about these days. They have locked in $1 million from some of the top investors in the Seattle, Wa. area.

Way to go Bonanzle!!

Here is what Bonanzle's founder and CEO, Bill Harding has to say:

Why get funded? And why now?

We couldn't be happier about finally having the resources to buy a Bonanzle rocket ship. Mark has already dibsed first trip to Mars. For "normal" startups, raising money from investors is usually one of the first matters to get taken care of. If not for the strong support of our community and dear old Google search, we would have needed to do this a year ago. But because of Bonanzle's fast-spreading reputation (and thus sales), we have been able to bide our time and wait until we saw a deal that was simply too good to pass up.

This is that deal. Our group of investors is comprised of many of Seattle's most respected entrepeneurs and investors -- people who understand the significance of what we've built, what our community means to the site, and who agree with the service-first mantra that is going to help us continue to grow rapidly for years to come.

We feel like we owe this to our sellers. So many Bonanzle users have spent countless hours setting up their booths, marketing their items on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere, and have done all they can to build a successful business on Bonanzle. For the people who have stuck with us as we've grown, we want to prove our commitment to doing everything in our power to ensure that the time spent booth building is rewarded with a user experience that continues to improve, and continues to deliver an ever-growing number of buyers over time.

What changes?

The biggest change coming will be the increased speed at which we can fix bugs and create a more polished user experience. To this point, Bonanzle has been built with a very small development team. As our number of buyers continues to grow month after month, our obligation to tending the community grows, and the amount of time available to add meaningful improvements shrinks. If there's one thing we will never be OK with, it's stagnation. Though it will take some time to put the right team in place, within the next few months, we expect that our speed of evolution will become even faster than it had been back in the glory days of 2k9.

Another personal pet peeve of mine over the last year has been how little time we've had to focus test our buying and selling experiences. With our new resources, one of my first priorities will be to put in place a sustainable plan to ensure that stuff works the way that real users expect it to, not just the way we think it probably ought to work at the time its added.

What doesn't change?

This is probably the equally important, if not more important, question to many of our existing users.

First of all, Mark and I will continue to perform the same roles we have had. That is, Mark will continue to ensure that we provide the best support experience of any marketplace online, and I'll continue to work toward creating a fast and simple site that is fun to use.

Bonanzle will remain a product-driven company, as opposed to a marketing-driven company. It's true that we are treading toward more advertising through Adwords and otherwise, and we will continue to incrementally spend on a limited amount of advertising. But fundamentally, it is our belief that $1 spent on building a better site will provide more sustained value than $1 buying a single customer, and then sending that customer into a mediocre experience. During this crucial phase of our growth, it is imperative that we focus on what makes the Bonanzle experience unique, and polish it like crazy until it is so wonderful it makes new users weep in joyful triumph. (<-- use of hyperbole, but you get the idea).

Oh, and for all the paranoiacs in the crowd, I would be remiss not to state the obvious: that fees here are obviously not changing (they're locked in, remember?)

What is Bonanzle doing next?

1. Hiring (say, you wouldn't happen to know any good programmers, designers, or product/ui specialists, would you?)

2. Everything else. Where "everything else" includes: working to get our sellers more detailed metrics about their item visitors and sales; making it easier to register and chat on the site if you don't have an account; investigating means by which to make it easier for new visitors to trust Bonanzle and our sellers; building ways to make category-specific shopping experience interesting; and countless other surprises of the pleasant sort.

http://www.bonanzle.com/blogs/167
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Bonanzle has really shown how they are not just a fly by night company and the fact that investors are willing to drop their money on the site says a lot for the potential of the site. It looks like there is a very bright future ahead!

Congratulations to Bonanzle, Bill Harding and the rest of the staff!

eCrater Hits 1 Millionth Sale

eCrater has hit it's 1 millionth sale. All of that hard work and dedication by eCrater staff and sellers has paid off.

Sales seem to be increasing and sellers are quite happy with the site. Completely free to sell on eCrater, sellers are seeing the site as a viable and profitable venue.

Figuring out just how many sales have taken place is a bit difficult as many sales may be completed off-site. For this announcement, the invoice numbers were used but they have likely cleared far more sales than one million.

Congratulations eCrater!