Online gambling attracting the crooks

The increasing popularity of online gambling is making it a happy hunting ground for cyber criminals - with one fifth of all web fraud centring on punters and virtual bookies.

Europay, the European arm of credit card giant Mastercard, is reacting to the surge in fraud by pledging to concentrate new security measures on the online gambling world.

Last year online fraud accounted for £411m - five per cent of the total money lost to fraud - which represented a doubling on the previous year's figure.

With increased interest in gambling and a loosening on laws governing it in the UK it is in the interest of credit card companies and the government to act now to deter organised crime and lone fraudsters from seeing online gambling as an easy source of cash.

The news follows an announcement yesterday from the government that it is to introduce a kitemark scheme to bring greater legitimacy to the online gambling world and to inform customers as to which sites are a safe place to lay a bet.