An operating system of choice for online fraudsters is Linux,Portland, Ore.-based fraud monitoring company iovation said in a detailed study released Monday.

“Interestingly, we found that 2.3% of all transactions fromLinux-based machines, 1.4% of all transactions from Windowsmachines and 1% of all transactions from Macs were fraudulent,”Scott Waddell, vice president of technology at iovation, said in aprepared statement.

“You'll note that there were no mobile platforms in the topthree; we believe this is because fraudsters prefer operatingsystems that make it easier to automate their schemes,” Waddellsaid.

iovation elaborated that it based its report on analysis of someone billion connected devices that the company tracks.

The company did not offer an opinion on why seemingly so muchfraud originates on Linux devices – an operating systemtraditionally favored by the more technically astute – than oneither Windows or Mac OS machines.

Central to the iovation analysis is that the company seeks totrack not individual computer users as such but devices, each ofwhich has unique identifying characteristics. In its report,iovation claimed that “in 84% of all transactions deemed fraudulentat iovation customers, iovation already had experience with theassociated devices.”