Romania is fifth in the world and first in Europe in a ranking of the most fraudulent countries made by Israeli internet security firm Forter.

“Europe shows well when it comes to fraud rates, coming in under the average, and four of the 5 least fraudulent countries are European. That said, one of the 5 most fraudulent countries is Romania, also located in Europe,” according to an article published on the Forter blog.

The company analyzed more than 1 million e-commerce transactions among a variety of online retailers in consumer goods, luxury, travel and financial services. Then it calculated the e-commerce fraud rates for each country based on complaints from merchants and consumers, looking at fraud committed by retailers and by consumers.

According the Forter study, the only countries where the internet fraud rate is higher than in Romania are Indonesia, Venezuela, South Africa and Brazil. A combination of weak economic conditions and decent internet infrastructure usually leads to higher fraud rates.

Romania has the third highest broadband internet speed in the world, according to Ookla.

The high incidence of fraud attempts in Romania is one of the reasons why large online retailers, especially from the U.S. are not making deliveries to this country.

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editor@romania-insider.com