For a nation so wary of divulging personal details to the State, the British have proved remarkably willing to divulge them to online retailers. The volume of shopping conducted via the internet doubled between 2004 and 2006 and is expected to treble again as a proportion of total retail sales over the next ten years. The online transaction, in other words, is fast becoming as natural to the broadband-connected shopper as the walk down the high street was to his or her parents. The requirement to type in one’s name, address, sixteen-digit card number and three-digit security code is accepted by millions as the price of an astonishing leap forward in convenience.

This is as it should be. Besides sparing customers endless hours in traffic and checkout queues, the online marketplace is the most efficient ever devised. It minimises overheads, maximises competition, drives down prices and offers the prospect of a radically reduced carbon footprint for the retail sector. It also depends critically on consumer confidence in the security of online transactions, and this confidence is at grave risk from an exponential increase in online crime.

The number of e-mail scamsters phishing for personal data by impersonating banking websites has exploded from a few hundred in the UK three years ago to more than 5,000 today. Globally, the total number of fraud-based websites is estimated to have quadrupled to nearly 29,000 in the past year alone. The trend is driven partly by technology. The internet’s Achilles’ heel is its ease of access to all, regardless of motive. But the steep rise is also driven by greed and gullibility, and the greed is not all the criminals’. As we report today, many of the newest phishing scams include cash incentives in return for bank details, such as the tax rebates promised to recipients of a recent mass e-mail purporting to be from HM Revenue & Customs. A variation is the threat to withdraw the convenience of online shopping, as in sternly worded messages received by millions from an amazon.com impostor.

Amazon and other online retailers may be acting to protect their good name and their customers’ personal data. They must do more. Unlike banks, they do not guarantee customers against losses to online fraud. Unlike “real-world” retailers, their inventory is not at risk. In fact, this sort of online crime represents, initially, a relatively low risk to retailers and to the criminals themselves, and an unusually high risk to consumers.

The response by industry and police has so far been vigorous but reactive. By cooperating with one another and internet service providers, they claim to be able to locate and shut down criminal websites within 24 hours if the sites are based within the EU. But a growing proportion of online fraud now emanates from Asia, Nigeria and Eastern Europe outside the EU, and is controlled by crime syndicates that hire computer science graduates and pay handsomely for their expertise. Major internet-based companies must consider bold new anticrime initiatives — and proactively recruiting such scamming expertise to their own side should be among them.

Shoppers should be as worldly online as on the high street, but online retailers must also do more to protect them. If not, the remarkable British acceptance of “one-click” and “proceed to checkout” will be replaced by a lack of confidence and a fall in sales.