Online shopping is becoming more secure for UK consumers as e-commerce retailers adopt new strategies to fight against card fraud incidents, a recent report has unveiled.

Retail Decisions (ReD), an international payment fraud prevention group, predicts that there will be fewer attempts by criminals to fraudulently buy items from websites, by mail order or by phone in the UK in 2010, as compared with the 2009 situation. The predictions are based on ReD's figures for the first six months of 2010, which show that CNP fraud reached an estimated GBP 122 million, a decrease of approximately 9 percent compared with the first six months of 2009 when CNP fraud losses totalled GBP134 million.

Nevertherless, the decrease in online payment fraud in the UK should not be attributed only to the increasingly sophisticated fraud prevention technology employed by e-tailers. UK consumers have also played an important role in the improvement of security issues as far as UK online shopping is concerned. According to the report, the latter are growing more aware of the fraudsters' tactics and consequently, are able to engage better measures to protect themselves.