Offerpal Media Launches OfferpalSECURE to Fight Virtual Currency Fraud

FREMONT, CA--(Marketwire - July 16, 2009) - Virtual currency has emerged as a significant source of revenue for online games and social applications, but the industry's above-average rate of fraudulent user behavior poses a serious threat to the growth and sustainability of those revenues. To combat fraud, Offerpal Media today announced the general release of OfferpalSECURE, a complete suite of security and fraud prevention services designed to help online gaming companies, social application developers and other social web publishers reduce the lost revenue and diminished user experience resulting from fraudulent activity in their virtual economies. Combining both manual and automated fraud monitoring systems with the latest Internet security technologies, OfferpalSECURE has proven to reduce publisher fraud by more than 60% in extensive tests. The entire suite is available to all publishers for free as an integrated part of Offerpal Media's offer-based payment platform.

Security experts estimate that when left unchecked, as much as 50% of gaming publishers' transactions for intangible goods like virtual currency can be fraudulent -- especially if player-to-player transfers are allowed. "Fraud is a serious problem for the online gaming space," said TrustWho Founder and CEO Marcus Eikenberry, whose company offers anti-fraud technologies and services to the video game industry. "And the problem will get worse if it isn't tackled immediately, because scammers and hackers only become emboldened by their early successes. I'm glad to see a company like Offerpal helping to raise the bar for the entire industry."

Eikenberry estimates that even for online games where player-to-player transfers are not allowed, the fraud rates tends to hover around 10%, a number considerably higher than the Internet average and representing a significant source of lost revenue for the industry. Fraudulent activity also damages the user experience for legitimate users by creating inflated prices, unfair player advantages and imbalanced economies.

Playdom is a leading social game developer and one of Offerpal Media's key publishing partners. According to Sean Phinney, Playdom's VP Business Development, "As social games provide more immersive entertainment, player adoption of virtual currencies will only grow. Given our commitment to delivering a great player experience, Playdom sees this as a high priority issue. We commend Offerpal's leadership putting safety measures in place to protect our players."

Offerpal Media's virtual currency monetization platform has long included strict security controls such as IP Whitelisting and support of HTTPS protocols. With OfferpalSECURE, the company has now added even more security measures, including the use of a secure hash signature added to the callback URL, enabling publishers to verify the signature and authenticity of their callbacks with a secret key code. OfferpalSECURE also features the addition of several automated fraud monitoring and alert systems to go along with the dedicated fraud management team that Offerpal employs to identify, manage and reduce fraudulent activities. These new proprietary rules and triggers include real-time velocity controls to detect irregular patterns in user behavior and machine fingerprinting to prevent scammers from using multiple accounts in order to game the system.

Unlike e-commerce sites or other types of web properties, social gaming publishers have a unique set of fraudulent behaviors they must counteract. "We've processed more than 200 million transactions since our inception in 2007," said Anu Shukla, Founder and CEO of Offerpal Media, Inc. "And from our learnings we've developed a comprehensive fraud prevention product that was designed from the ground up for online games and social applications. Our goal is to preserve revenues for our publishing partners, create a better, fairer gaming experience for legitimate users, and deliver high-value new customers to our advertising partners."

Fraudulent behavior on social games can take the form of fake account-creation, account takeover, credit card fraud, fraudulent offer completion or other strategies -- and ultimately take money out of publishers' pockets. With the new security and fraud controls built into OfferpalSECURE, Offerpal Media is able to identify fraud as it happens and put an immediate hold on suspicious activities until they can be further investigated by the company's fraud management analysts. By catching fraud early and preventing it from escalating, Offerpal is able to preserve the integrity of its publishers' virtual economies.

About Playdom

Playdom is a leading social gaming company. As communicated in the tagline "Where players rule," Playdom is committed to delivering the best possible player experience to its more than 20 million monthly active users on Facebook, MySpace and Hi5. Playdom is located in Mountain View, CA. Please visit www.playdom.com for more information.

About Offerpal Media

Offerpal Media was the first payment platform to monetize social applications, online games, virtual worlds, social networks, mobile applications and other social gaming publishers by providing end-users with a comprehensive set of virtual currency payment options, including direct payments such as PayPal, credit card, micro-transactions and mobile payments, as well as advertising offer such as free trials, big-brand discounts, online surveys and more as an alternate payment method. The company's turnkey monetization platform uses a sophisticated optimization engine and proprietary algorithms to generate publisher revenues at a network-wide average of $80 per day for every 1,000 Daily Active Users. The platform also allows advertisers to tap into Offerpal Media's network of more than 50 million highly engaged and targeted consumers to generate high-value new customers. For more information, visit www.offerpalmedia.com.

Contact Information: Contact Information Jason Throckmorton or Rachel Levine LaunchSquad 415.625.8555 Offerpal(at)launchsquad(dot)com