Fraud Prevention Blog

• TABLE OF CONTENTS •
Consumer Behavior during the Holidays
Holiday 2015 Retail Stats Review
Holiday 2016 Retail Forecast
Holiday Fraud Issues
Holiday Fraud Prevention Tips

On November 17, U.S. Secret Service revealed that $30 million in counterfeit money had been uncovered and seized in Peru on November 15. This is quite the historical counterfeit money bust: it is the largest amount of counterfeit money ever seized by the Secret Service.

Traditionally, “skimming” meant secretly taking small amounts of money from a larger amount of money, such as taking a couple of dollars from the cash register when the boss wasn’t looking. But today, skimming colloquially refers to card skimming.

October 1, 2016 was the first anniversary of EMV’s adoption by the United States. Businesses who have not yet adopted the EMV standard are exposed to the fraud liability shift imposed by the standard.

It is often said that the act of counterfeiting money is as old as money itself. No matter the type of currency used throughout history – whether it was the metal coins used in Lydia in 640BC or the cowry shells that were used as currency in Orissa, India until 1805 – there was sure to be someone intentionally attempting to pass off a counterfeit version as the real thing.

Since the beginning of the year, 7 states have issued updated versions of state identification cards - i.e.: driver licenses and identification (ID) cards - to meet the requirements of the Real ID Act.

Chip-enabled (EMV) credit cards are designed to be more secure than magnetic stripe cards because the ability of the chip to create dynamic, single-use data that is nearly impossible for fraudsters to counterfeit. At least, that is how the main advantage of EMV credit cards was touted by the consortium of card-issuing banks and other institutions that had been suffering billions of dollars of losses for years leading up the October 1, 2015 deadline for US businesses to adopt the new EMV standard.

Identity Theft continues to rank as the fastest growing form of fraudulent crime

A recent report by CIFAS - a not-for-profit company working to protect businesses, charities, public bodies and individuals from financial crime – revealed that prolific users of social media had experienced a 57% increase in incidences of misuse of their personally identifying information over last year. All because fraudsters were able to scrape their victims’ important personal data straight from social media profiles. Information such as birthdates, mother’s name, addresses, former residences and more can all be a key part of building an identity profile sufficient to enable access to accounts or the creation of new ones.

An estimated 9 million American identities are stolen each year – it’s no wonder why identity theft is the #1 complaint amongst American consumers, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Although dealing with identity theft and fraud is akin to addressing the elephant in the room – no one wants to do it – it is becoming increasingly important that businesses, particularly those in the banking industry, take the lead in providing fraud prevention solutions for their customers, lest they want to miss out on profiting from the biggest generation since the Baby Boomers: the Millennials.

Millennials, unlike previous generations, live and breathe technology. And this coupled with the fact that rampant rates of identity theft and fraud have left American consumers – no matter which generation they’re from – fearing identity theft the most whenever they’re online, means that preventing and addressing security concerns needs to be a priority when attempting to attract this upcoming technology-dependent generation as customers.

Mobile Identity Authentication

Many potential business-cases point to the desire to have an identity authentication solution available as a mobile application on a smart phone or tablet. In some cases, it simply isn’t feasible to have a stationary device, tethered to a PC, available at the location where authentications must occur. In other cases, it may be desirous to have a client that is not in your physical store or branch location conduct an identity authentication wherever they are – which might be in their home, at a hotel, or even walking on the street.