Combating online in-auction fraud: Clues, techniques and challenges

The number of Internet auction shoppers is rapidly growing. However, online auction customers may suffer from auction fraud, sometimes without even noticing it. In-auction fraud differs from pre- and post-auction fraud in that it happens in the bidding period of an active auction. Since the in-auction fraud strategies are subtle and complex, it makes the fraudulent behavior more difficult to discover. Researchers from disciplines such as computer science and economics have proposed a number of methods to deal with in-auction fraud. In this paper, we summarize commonly seen indicators of in-auction fraud, provide a review of significant contributions in the literature of Internet in-auction fraud, and identify future challenging research tasks.