Identity fraud in the UK was recently said by experts to be at record “epidemic levels” with Cifas discovering that more than 89,000 cases were reported in the first six months of the year alone – a 5% rise year-on-year. The advent of internet banking – and more recently, mobile banking – has changed the fraud landscape forever, not least because most fraudulent incidences are overwhelmingly taking place via internet channels. Collaboration is the key.
Statistics show that fraud follows the channels of adoption; while accurate figures today for fraud (particularly mobile) are hard to come by thanks to various factors (e.g. incidences going unreported by victims or banks), the rise in frequency of increasingly sophisticated fraud techniques demonstrates a criminal community that is getting harder and harder to prevent, identify and even prosecute. As the major technology players of this world roll out multi-factor authentication methods in order to block dishonest transactions, fraudsters continue to work hard to try and break them.
One example of a ‘newer’ type of fraud that we work with many different banks on to develop new methods of prevention and identification, is SIM Swap fraud. Social engineering has played a huge part in boosting fraudsters’ efforts to clean out unsuspecting customers’ bank accounts and is an essential component of frauds like SIM Swap. For this method of fraud to work, the criminal needs to convince the mobile network operator to replace the victim’s mobile SIM card in order to access sensitive information, such as one-time pass-codes for payment verification.