Merchant beware: E-thieves are out there.

Fraud is still a problem for online retailers. But even though actual losses are rising, the rate of those losses is flattening out.

In other words, the threat actually may be lessening — somewhat. According to the "8th Annual Online Fraud Report," released by CyberSource, losses from online fraud in the US and Canada in 2006 totaled $3 billion, a 7% increase over 2005.

But the percentage of revenues lost to fraud improved slightly — dropping to 1.4% in 2006, down from 1.6% the year before.

This is the third consecutive year to show a decline in the percentage rate of revenue loss, but because e-commerce sales continue to grow at more than 20% a year, the overall dollar-loss amount showed a rise.

With only 1% of accepted orders ultimately turning out to be fraudulent, merchants are erring on the side of caution by rejecting roughly 4% of their incoming orders due to suspicion of fraud. That means about 3% of total e-commerce revenues may be lost each year as valid orders are turned down.