Veriff, a global identity verification (IDV) provider, this week released Veriff Identity Fraud Report 2024. This analysis of global customer data suggests that overall fraud incidents are up 20% compared to last year’s findings. The authors believe this overall increase is a result of the rise in impersonation fraud and the availability of more advanced attack methodologies and tools.
As more advanced technology becomes available to fraudsters, detecting and defending against attacks and infiltration attempts becomes more difficult. This is particularly true in the gaming, payments, and e-commerce industries, which each saw respective fraud increases over the past year of 47.5%, 54%, and 40.3% compared to 2022.
“Fraudsters have more tools than ever, such as generative AI and deepfakes-as-a-service platforms, readily accessible to manipulate and steal someone’s identity,” said David Divitt, Veriff’s senior director of fraud prevention and experience. “Our defences are advancing as well. By combining robust IDV technology with human expertise, we can beat fraudsters and build a secure, yet convenient, user experience. In fact, biometric authentication is one of the most vital tools available to us in this fight against fraud.”
According to Veriff’s report, roughly one in 15 verification attempts was someone of something pretending to be someone else. Veriff’s data also revealed that 85% of fraud was categorized as impersonation fraud, which includes the use of someone else’s document or the person or document not being present for verification. The remaining 15% consisted of document fraud (13%) and digital and physical man-in-the-middle fraud (MITM) (2%). MITM involves coercing the victim to access accounts, make transactions, or even tech support scams.
Fraudsters are opportunistic and take advantage of the variety of tools at their disposal. They test out several methods on a target until they find a vulnerability and then exploit that until they are stopped. Therefore, it is impossible to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach or to imagine that a growing company can deploy just one tool to tackle every type of fraud it faces across a complex global and sectoral landscape. Instead, holistic fraud prevention strategies featuring a flexible, multi-faceted approach that employs biometrics, IDV, crosslinking and more are required to successfully combat fraudsters.
