owners by fraudsters or they can be purchased with stolen credit card information. In recent years, cyber criminals have increased their efforts to take advantage of fraudulent gift cards as they are simple to exploit with automated brute-force bot attacks. The most common form of gift card fraud is committed through the act of stealing card information for activated cards with an existing balance by attacking a retailer's systems which store gift card data. Once a gift card has been compromised, the fraudster will then check the balance through online customer portals before using the funds or reselling on the secondary gift card market. Redemption rate Not all gift cards are redeemed. The card may be lost, there may be time decay expiration and fees or complex rules of redemption, or the recipient may not be interested in the store that accepts the card or be under the false assumption that not using it will save money for the giver. It has been estimated that perhaps 10% of cards are not redeemed, amounting to a gain for retailers of about $8 billion in the United States in 2006. In 2012, over $100 billion in gift cards will be purchased in the United States, where over 20% of those gift cards will go unredeemed or unused. This has amassed a large opportunity in the secondary market, similar to the secondary ticket market in the early 2000s. Some companies have created a business in the secondary gift card market that allow consumers to sell their unused gift cards or buy discounted gift cards to their favorite brands. This has helped their users recoup their share of some $55 million per day that goes unredeemed in the United States every year. Regulations Canada All Canadian provinces have legislations passed to ban expiry dates and fees collected on gift cards. However, provincial gift card legislations do not apply to sectors that are regulated under federal laws. For example, gift cards that resemble credit cards i.e. with American Express, MasterCard, or Visa branding and phone cards are regulated by the federal government. Under the federal Prepaid Payment Products Regulations, effective 1 May 2014, federally regulated gift cards may only charge maintenance fees under certain conditions and may not set an expiry date for funds on those cards. United States In the past, uniform standards concerning gift cards did not exist. This was set to change