Online fraud detection: ‘In the moment’ digital accountability in a data-sensitive setting

Recent years have seen significant increases in online fraud. The fact that online fraud represents a major challenge to law enforcement due to its complexities and global impact has led to the emergence of other organisations – such as Customer Service Centres – taking a key role in ‘policing’ fraudulent activities. However, the responses made by these specialist organisations remain opaque and outside the scope of regimes that regulate law enforcement agencies. In this article we address this opacity through our study of a Customer Service Centre that makes decisions on what constitutes online fraud in cases of card-not-present payments. We carefully work through these decision-making processes to explore the immediate pressures made manifest in decisions on fraud around, for example, cost and timeliness. These pressures become apparent in the particular arrangements of accountability and responsibility in decisions on online fraud and cut what might otherwise be lengthy procedures following these decisions. As a result we suggest that accountability in these fraud cases is managed and held ‘in the moment’ within the Centre. The article contributes to our understanding of online fraud and to the growing debate on digital accountability. The article provides avenues for further exploration of the challenges of moving from internal to external accountability in relation to largely opaque and data-sensitive settings where accountability relations are held ‘in the moment.’