The European "online market"

With the fast dissemination of public on line interactive services such as the internet and

interactive TV and the increasing use of customer devices like PCs, mobile phones and PDAs,

the European “on line market” is expanding rapidly.

Electronic payments, which cover any kind of non-cash payments that do not involve a paper

check, are considered as an essential cornerstone for this on line market. However, electronic

payments cannot be sustainable without a secure and trusted environment in order to obtain

and maintain the confidence of all stakeholders, more in particular the customers..This trust in

the system can only be achieved through an appropriate protection of its users against the

various security threats. For example, one of the main security concerns for the users of an

electronic payment system is to receive debits for a transaction they never agreed upon. This

could happen as a consequence of an end-user privacy violation, e.g., when personal

information is re-used for another purpose than the orginal intended one (e.g., having card or

account data stolen and re-used in a so-called replay attack). Identity theft, which is the

fraudulent exploitation of another entity’s identifying information for criminal purposes is

emerging as one of the most important type of crime nowadays. However, identity theft can

be avoided by ensuring the right security measures and policies, including the appropriate

authentication of all the principals acting in a transaction system to guarantee proof of their

identity.

The objective of the present study is to analyse current and prospective card holdemethods are the most frequently used, their actual protection against certain fraud types, the

potential barriers regarding the use of these techniques and their economics and collateral

dependencies.

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