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The financial industry's leading consumer fraud prevention awareness platform.
We review everything that is happening in the world of fraud. We manage and update your awareness program to reinforce your message of compassion and security expertise. Helping you to easily maintain content that is relevant now and in the ever-changing future.
Explaining the Risks.
Even with stronger technology controls, employees working from home must still exercise good judgment to maintain information security. The added stress many people feel can make them more prone to social-engineering attacks. Some employees may notice that their behavior isn't monitored as it is in the office and therefore choose to engage in practices that open them to other threats, such as visiting malicious websites that office networks block. Building a "human firewall" will help ensure that employees who work from home do their part to keep the enterprise secure.
Replacing Content.
Today, content needs to be reviewed and updated to reinforce your message of compassion and security. We help you publish new "evergreen content" that is relevant now and in the ever-changing future. Consistency is key as 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each day.
Reinvention of Authority.
Most consumers now believe that financial institutions are an authority capable of protecting them from fraud. Consumer awareness that is both in-person & online is critical to maintaining account holder satisfaction, fighting attrition, and gaining exposure to new prospects. As you continue to expand your brand experience across multiple channels, we offer an opportunity to optimize the customer / member experience.
Looking Ahead.
As consumers quickly embrace the digital economy, your competitive landscape expands. Our service is built to last as you future-proof your foundation in this new world of ever-changing and agile strategic planning.
Content Syndication.
The use of identical or similar content across multiple channels is strategic repurposing that not only reduces the time and expense it takes to develop content, but also helps you reach a wider range of personas across all the channels you use.
Increasing Awareness.
The internet is inundated with notoriously unreliable information, and account holders may not know what information is reliable. You know the threats, but they may not. Increasing awareness is crucial.
Serve, Don't Sell.
Today's best practices include offering content with real value. Everything you share should offer a benefit to whomever is on the receiving end. Fraud awareness is an opportunity to serve others and to build true human connections. The more complex and challenging our world becomes, the more welcome it is to come across as a company who is genuinely interested in helping others.
Late Adaptors.
A long-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic will be changes in customer / member servicing preferences. Consumers are increasingly looking to run their financial life through apps and online banking. Fraud risks will increase as more people embrace convenience technologies such as P2P Payments and Mobile Apps, especially for late-adaptors and older generations of consumers.
Virtual Fraud Support.
As more people shift to virtual working, consuming, and socializing will fuel a massive shift to virtual activity for everything. It will affect ways of communicating in person as it relates to fraud support.
Platform Modernization.
Helping consumers solve problems themselves. Enabling your account holders to access content without interruption is essential.
Up and Running in Minutes.
Save time and remove any bottlenecks to productivity. Our service collects no data and or requires user permissions. This lessens your IT department's burden since your users don't need to request access. Freeing up IT's time to focus on more business-critical tasks.
Vendor & Labor Optimization.
IT demands are escalating while pressures to keep costs down are intensifying. Outsourcing will bring IT cost down while increasing productivity gains.
Cost & Efficiency.
Helpdesk and end-user support costs are reduced by automating common requests. Digital disruption continues to change the banking landscape and puts pressure on the traditional banking model. We are part of the new dynamic environment for highly efficient IT delivery.
Service & Support.
A long-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic will be changes in customer servicing preferences. Consumers are increasingly looking to run their financial life through apps and online banking. Our cloud-based service is designed to support you as consumers change their habits.
Strategic Planning.
The "New Normal" is going to be a world of uncertainty. Saving money and avoiding the hazards of losing money to scammers will be more important than ever before.
Risk Resilience.
The speed of reacting to a crisis has triggered new risks such as being unprepared for a locked-down economy. With eFraud Prevention™ you won't have to scramble to adjust since there is no need to building alternative models for fraud support and awareness.
ROI Calculators
On average, the annual cost of eFraud Prevention pays for itself when helping as few as 8 of your account holders or employees to avoid getting scammed. In addition, we help save you time with your fraud awareness outreach, account holder support, and marketing. Learn more about how much time and money can save with eFraud Prevention™.
Social Media Ready Posts
Appropriately sized image posts for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Drive more engagement and generate more views on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn with the help of our fraud awareness designed post banners. All Banners are free to use, sized appropriately, and super easy to customize.
Ultimate Fraud Help Desk
Ultimate fraud victim assistance & support tool for both consumers and small businesses.
We recently redesign our 24/7 support tool so everyone can quickly find the resources to help with every type of fraud related problem.
Fraud Statistics & Trends
In addition to our 2020 fraud prediction list, we now have the 2021 list as well as fraud trends and our most popular topics.
Client Dashboard Redesign
We redesigned and added more features to our integration and employee support dashboard.
Up-To-Date Content: We now have seven ways for you to access content for your Web site, Blog, Social Media, Email Newsletters, Print, etc.
- By Fraud Category
- What's Trending
- What's Most Popular
- By Demographic Age
- Social Media Ready Posts
- Search Specific Topic
- Small Business Topics
Today, there are tools you can use to better secure your identity, device and data. Even with all this advanced technology, Americans lost $667 million to imposter scams alone in 2019.
Most consumers now believe that only financial institutions are capable of protecting them from fraud. With over 6.5 billion fraud attacks per year, consumer awareness remains the only effective measure to prevent imposter and other social engineering scams.
How to stay safe:
Where people are at risk:
- Tech support scams
- Grandkid / relative scams
- IRS imposter scams
- Investment scams
- Phishing
- Identity theft
- Online shopping fraud
- ATM / POS skimming
- Debt collection scams
- Counterfeit check scams
- Online dating scams
- Real estate/rental scams
- Auction fraud
- Advance fee fraud
- Coronavirus scams
- Employment scams
- Charity donation fraud
- Work at home scams
- Credit repair scams
- Telephone / mobile scams
- Elder fraud
- P2P payments
- Fake news & hoaxes
- Wire fraud
- Account takeover
- Ransomware
- Social media scams
- Computer hacking
Nobody wants to get scammed.
Your account holders have questions about ID theft, data breaches, scams, and hacking. We offer an easy way for you to turn the problem of fraud into an outreach opportunity.
Woman: Majority of women feel falling victim to fraud is 'inevitable'.
Seniors: Seniors citizens risk loss of savings.
Millennials: Young people aged 18-25 are easier targets for online fraud and are at risk of credit related problems due to identity theft.
93% believe their online actions can protect friends and family.
96% said they want to learn more about keeping safer online.
48% feel their actions to stay safe can have a positive impact.
90% feel a personal responsibility to be safer online.
Doesn't have to be costly.
Maintaining relevant content is critical. However, the cost and time required to manage up-to-date content is one of the reasons many financial web sites fraud awareness content is limited. The annual costs for eFraud Prevention™ pays for itself by helping as few as eight people to avoid becoming victimized by Imposter Fraud, Identity Theft, Check Fraud, Online Fraud, or Telephone and Mobile Scams. We modernize your platform to improve your fraud awareness digital banking experience.
Content never becomes outdated while visitors stay on your site longer.
The average user spends 5.59 seconds looking at a website’s content because people rarely read your content word for word. Instead, they scan the page to pick out important words and phrases. Our content is scannable in an easy to-do style format so your visitors don’t have to slog through a lot of copy to get answers. You keep our product on your site so that visitors won't need to navigate away, which often results in them leaving sooner than they would have otherwise. Helping people find things faster ultimately keeps them on your site longer too.
Get your fraud awareness content in-line with what people are most worried about.
Our service can help you to bring your fraud awareness more in-line with what consumers and small businesses are most interested in. We have up-to-the-minute statistics on what is trending and what is most popular. This would be helpful to create relevant member experiences, drive brand awareness, produce outreach campaigns and to position your financial institution as a thought leader.
The number one fear for almost every adult is financial security.
Financial security is threatened or eliminated when someone becomes a victim of any one of the hundreds of scams attacking people every day by email, social media, paper mail, telephone, mobile, and web. Preventing fraud through awareness and education presents a huge opportunity for marketing managers.
The new normal - more fraud.
With so many people now working remote or being unemployed, data is suggesting that imposter fraud will surpass the 38% growth reported in 2019.
The reinvention of authority.
Today, most believe that only their financial institution can protect them from fraud scams and identity theft. In this new era of online fraud, consumers are more fearful than ever about their identity being stolen and used illegally, damaging their credit and their future ability to secure loans or perform other vital financial transactions. As a result, consumers are trusting their financial institutions to improve their defenses against fraudulent actors looking to steal, sell and use their PII. Preventing fraud through awareness and education is important for a financial institution's reputation and future success.
More small business support.
Adding more fraud awareness for your small business clients makes sense. Not surprisingly, our latest nationwide statistics demonstrate a big increase in fraud awareness interest by small businesses.
24/7 Remote support.
Current events are requiring more communication & the ability for your customers or members to access resources and information at a moment's notice.
Up and running in minutes.
Save time and remove any bottlenecks to productivity. Our service collects no data and or requires user permissions. This lessens your IT department's burden since your users don't need to request access. Freeing up IT’s time to focus on more business-critical tasks.
Supporting resilience.
As security teams share best practices to improve awareness of social engineering and other types of fraud, our service becomes part of the mix to support the many communication approaches necessary to get their messages across.Serve, don't sell.
Today's best practices include offering content with real value. Everything you share should offer a benefit to whomever is on the receiving end. Fraud awareness is an opportunity to serve others and to build true human connections. The more complex and challenging our world becomes, the more welcome it is to come across as a company who is genuinely interested in helping others.
Late adaptors.
A long-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic will be changes in customer / member servicing preferences. Consumers are increasingly looking to run their financial life through apps and online banking. Fraud risks will increase as more people embrace convenience technologies such as P2P Payments and Mobile Apps, especially for late-adaptors and older generations of consumers.
Regulatory compliance.
Anti-fraud compliance obligations include the creation and ongoing maintenance of an effective consumer fraud prevention program. We are often told by our bank and credit union clients that our service is applauded and encouraged when the FDIC and NCUA regulatory agencies perform their audits.
Less financial crime to investigate.
By automating the creation of high-quality consistent content with your digital and social channels while providing a unified fraud awareness service throughout all departments within your organization will transform your fraud awareness outreach to create greater account holder engagement.
Remove frustration.
Frustrated by the effort it takes to continually educate about fraud safety? Since 2004, eFraud Prevention™ has been a trusted partner working with financial institutions to make it easier to be proactive in helping everyone remain "fraud smart".
Company History
Established in 2004, eFraud Prevention is the largest and broadest provider of fraud prevention awareness.
Consistently ranked as number one in the space, eFraud Prevention™ offers financial institutions an opportunity to serve and support account holders. Together, we are proud to be able to reach and protect millions of consumers in communities throughout all of the United States of America.
Financial Institutions are one of the first places people turn to when they have a question about online security or fraud. As our world becomes more complex and challenging, fraud prevention awareness is a surefire way to help everyone.
As you continue to expand your brand experience across multiple channels, we offer an opportunity to optimize that experience. Account holder education is a key to minimizing fraud. The difficult part is consistentcy and remaining committed to a cross channel effort. For 17 years we've helped to streamline this process.
IAFCI is a global network of law enforcement, card associations, banks and non-banks, private label issuers, to name a few. eFraud Prevention™ provides the bulk of consumer awareness information on the IAFCI web site. Helping with IAFCI's effort to safeguard the world's economy through teamwork.
eFraud Prevention™ was the first online service dedicated to offering consumer awareness for fraud prevention. We were an established online service before the existence of any private or government funded consumer awareness initiatives.
IAFCI is a global network of law enforcement, card associations, banks and non-banks, private label issuers, to name a few. eFraud Prevention™ provides the bulk of consumer awareness information on the IAFCI web site. Helping with IAFCI's effort to safeguard the world's economy through teamwork.
Learn more at: IAFCI.org.
Similar to eFraud Prevention™, KnowBe4 understands that employees need to be more aware of the threat landscape and should be able to recognize the red flags in cyber breach attempts. Organizations tend to see their employees as liabilities rather than as assets, who, when trained appropriately and incentivized, can be part of a more robust solution to many problems. People play an undeniable role in an organization's overall security and risk posture.
How KnowBe4 works
Your employees are frequently exposed to sophisticated social engineering attacks. It is time for a comprehensive approach to effectively manage this problem, managed by people with a technical background.
Baseline Testing
They provide baseline testing to assess the Phish-prone percentage of your users through a simulated phishing, vishing or smishing attack. Test our platform yourself for 30 days.
Train Your Users
The world's largest library of security awareness training content; including interactive modules, videos, games, posters and newsletters. Automated training campaigns with scheduled reminder emails.
Phish Your Users
Best-in-class, fully automated simulated phishing, vishing and smishing attacks, thousands of templates with unlimited usage, and community phishing templates.
See The Results
Enterprise-strength reporting. Both high-level and granular stats and graphs ready for management reports. We even have a personal timeline for each user.
Read Case Study on how Knowbe4 helps financial institutions.
Financial Institutions rely on secure, accurate, and efficient identity authentication solutions to protect themselves and their account holders. Trust Stamp works with organizations on the cutting edge of financial security to do just that.
How Trust Stamp works
Synthetic Identity Detection
The Evergreen Hash™ is stored in the Trust Stamp Identity Lake and matched against all prior and future Evergreen Hashes™ to prevent duplicate identities (even those that pass KYC by using apparently valid identity documents). This process continues to catch fraudsters using the same face for multiple accounts, allowing financial institutions to give their account holders peace of mind that their accounts and identities are safe.
KYC & AML Compliance
To address the exponential growth in KYC/AML requirements, Trust Stamp empowers businesses with a completely automated transaction including our facial biometric tools and proprietary document OCR. Trust Stamp's multi-layer, automated, risk-based process speeds the process for both institutions and their account holders and provides audit trails, compliance reports and fuzzy logic to identify risky transactions and potential non-compliance.
Compliance FAQs
eFraud Prevention is an established and trusted company that has been serving the financial services industry since 2004. Throughout that time, eFraud Prevention has never had a security incident, data breach, or customer complaint. In addition, we have always passed our third-party penetration tests, server intrusion test and vulnerability audits. Our service is integrated within many large U.S. financial institution web sites as well as the leading organization for financial crime investigators (iafci.org).
Firewall Security:
IONOS by 1and1 - eFraud Prevention is hosted at IONOS by 1and1 on dedicated "bare-metal" server. We are the only 'tenant' on that server as it is not shared between other IONOS hosting customers. Unlike many servers in a data centers today, we are not being shared between multiple customers. All web traffic first enters the IONOS server facility before it enters our web server. Our Bare-metal Server account comes with a Firewall Policy center, which lets us control access to which ports are whitelisted on our dedicated web server. At the data center entry level, we block all traffic except for the 8 most commonly used server ports.
Cloudflare - Cloudflare Firewall software is managed within our "bare-metal" server as an additional layer of protection to filter HTTP requests. This allows gives us added security and control over which requests reach our server applications.
Product Integration:
We offer many ways to use or integrate our product. This includes iFrame, EMBED, JavaScript, RSS, PHP, and direct web link. Our service is also used by many clients as an internal "go-to" content hub for marketing content (articles, victim resources, images, videos, online quizzes, news, animations) employee training and customer / member support. This of course would pose no security concerns at all.
Common security concerns regarding the use of IFRAME integration:
Our most common integration method is the "iframe". The "iframe" method of integration is our most commonly used integration method. The iFrame is still the popular form of third-party web site integration and is used by firms such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and countless others.Security concerns regarding the iframe method include:
- The use of IFRAME by an untrusted source - eFraud Prevention is an established U.S firm that is vetted, trusted, and has served the financial services industry since 2004.
- Cross Site Scripting Attacks (XXS) - Our service and secure site is not vulnerable to Cross Site Scripting. In addition, our service does not include any web application that allows for user input.
- SQL Injection Attacks - Our service and secure site is not vulnerable to Cross Site Scripting. In addition, our service does not include any web application that allows for user input.
We monitor our web servers and server software 24/7 constantly and run third party scans. You can run your own pentest by using this domain:
https://efraudprevention.net/home/
Additional Processes:
- Databases: Requires complex password and two-factor authentication.
- Content Management System: Requires complex password and two-factor authentication.
- Patches / Updates: All software updates are set to install automatically.
- Anti-Virus: Set at both the network and at the server level.
- Denial of Service: Set at the network level.
- Content Integrity: Content is monitored every hour using server-side software and every 5 minutes using a 3rd party service to provide us with alerts if any unintended content changes occur.
The FFIEC, FINRA, FDIC and NCUA all recommend that financial institution increase consumer education as an effective method of reducing fraud. eFraud Prevention™, LLC was established in 2004 just for this purpose and we are the first service of its kind to offer fraud prevention consumer awareness as a service. We remain the only private company where consumer education is the sole product offering and not as an ancillary service to other product & services.
How we satisfy regulatory requirements for consumer education:
- Offer more fraud prevention resources
- Reach more people across more channels
- Offer real-time advice
- Resolve more questions in less time
- 2-way customer engagement
- 24-hour support
- Provide easier way to report fraud
- Publish timely fraud alerts
- Assist with I.D. theft
- Small business support
Pricing is based on the total assets of your financial institution.
Your total ANNUAL COST for our service is approximately:
$2.40 per 1 million in total assets
Learn more HERE
eFraud Prevention™ does not collect, capture, store, or resell data any data. This includes your specific web site traffic analytics, member or customer information or usage. Absolutely no data is collected, stored or sold by eFraud Prevention™.
eFraud Prevention™ does not resell any services and does not work with any third party firms to generate additional revenue through it's service.
eFraud Prevention™ was established in Connecticut in 2004.
Yes.
Daily.
If you are an eFraud Prevention™ customer, all articles and online quizzes are royalty free and no attribution is required. The eFraud Prevention™ education materials can be used as content for your Web site, print materials, social media content of other electronic forms of communications.
The eFraud Prevention™ consumer portal is designed to be "responsive" and will fit within any dimensions of your web site without have to be re-coded. We do also offer the option for customization if you prefer a different color scheme or the removal of specific content.
eFraud Prevention™, LLC started in 2004 as a spin off from an established Internet consulting firm. Our knowledge of the Internet and the world wide web began in 1995 and continues to the present day. All our consumer education articles are written in-house by our experts and are free for our clients to reproduce, distribute and display. In addition, no attribution to eFraud Prevention™, LLC is required when reproducing, distributing and displaying our consumer education articles.
eFraud Prevention™, LLC attends industry workshops, consults with industry peers, reviews blogs, publications, white papers, newsletters & web site articles from a wide variety of sources to maintain continued education and learning. eFraud Prevention™, LLC does not copy or redistribute any text or images contained on these sites.
eFraud Prevention™, LLC does not require a signed contract or time committment obligations. Everyone is required to follow the "terms of use" that are published on this web site.
Web Site Content, Newsletters, Blog Articles, Account Holder Support, Marketing Campaigns, Social Media, Public Relations, Outreach.
Social Media Content, Public Relations, Outreach, Help Desk, Support, Strategy Development.
Support Business Relationships, Call Center Support, Identifying Trends, Recognizing Threats, Developing Learning Materials and Awareness Programs.
Training Materials, Writing Articles, Mitigating Fraud Losses, Recognizing Threats, Developing Learning Materials and Awareness Programs.
Supporting Action Plans, Identifying External Threats, Regulatory Compliance, Minimizing Account Holder Losses.
IT Security, Web Development, Employee Training, Computer Programming.
Policy Development, Business Continuity, Protecting Account Holder Data, Strategic Planning, Developing Competence.
Developing Competence, Minimizing Account Holder Losses, Reducing Costs, Employee Training.
2021 Fraud Predictions - During and post pandemic
- Imposter Scams: Imposter scams involve criminals contacting consumers and attempting to obtain personal and banking information by impersonating agencies that are associated with COVID-19 or the U.S. government. These include, but are not limited to, the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control, Internal Revenue Service, and other agencies. Most recently, scammers have been targeting consumer unemployment benefits and small business loans, as well as posing as contact tracers and utility companies to trick people into providing personal information and funds. Criminals will attempt to exploit consumers through many channels, including email, SMS messaging, messaging services like WhatsApp, and even through direct calls to consumers. Scammers posing as contact tracers may ask for money, a consumer's social security number, financial information, or immigration status.
The risk associated with these types of scams is the exposure of data that could be used by cyber criminals to move money or obtain sensitive personal data such as Social Security numbers and bank account information. It is important for financial institutions to help raise awareness of these types of scams, both internally with your employees and externally with your account holders. Risk management teams should also increase monitoring of transactions to COVID-19-related agencies. Your institution may be able to help identify concerns and take action before account holders are even aware that they've been duped. - Covid-19 Malicious Apps: The internet is full of coronavirus scams. Some fraudsters will try to get passwords to email accounts and other sites; others will try to get ransomware onto the user's mobile or PC. The most dangerous scams, though, leverage the coronavirus pandemic to scare users into installing the malicious applications. Once installed on a device, these apps are built to download and install malware to monitor the device and steal banking credentials and personal information. Apps features can include: contact-tracing, tracking, coronavirus scanning, live monitoring, information, etc.
- The Return of the Money Mule: Account Takeover (ATO) fraud typically requires cashing out the victim's account through a local money mule. Mule recruitment was at an all-time high in 2008-2009 when people were victimized or willfully participated in work-from-home scams. With so many Americans unemployed right now, mule recruitment should be even easier - and will fuel the dark economy.
- Fraudulent Credit Card Accounts: With many people experiencing a drop in income, those who can get new credit lines are expected to do so - but the only way open for them is through their credit card website. This means an overall increase in online credit card applications. Fraudsters are likely to try to leverage the trend since increased activity and credit defaults will make it harder to identity fraudulent account openings and take longer to investigate suspect cases.
- Reduced Customer Loyalty: The current pandemic has created hording or demands that have emptied store shelves as well as most online marketplaces. Many people are turning to non-vetted third-party applications or online marketplaces to find these essentials. These lesser known sites can have poor security or may be fraudulent.
- Security for the "Phygital" shopping experience: Blending the elements of both a physical (curbside pickup, displaying your photo ID) and digital (selecting inventory and submitting payment, multifactor authentication) shopping experience together The combined online and in-store shopping habits are here to stay for the long term.
- More Social Engineering for Authorized Push Payments (APP): These scams are extremely effective and defeat all controls such as authentication, device, and location analysis. Criminals just need to persuade people into authorizing a payment to them. These include criminals impersonating a member of bank staff or a police officer and claiming there has been fraudulent activity on an account and that money needs to be transferred to a different account; impersonating a supplier or contractor, sending a fake invoice to a business, online auctions and classifieds scams, and investment scams.
- Contactless Shopping: As social distancing measures remain intact across the country, contactless shopping has encouraged consumers to use mobile apps for food and groceries that they otherwise may not have. With nearly three out of four Americans considering their online shopping transactions secure, there's a real sense of complacency, and a lack of digital security awareness. This uptick in activity signifies a change in users' digital behaviors, which serve as a major indicator to fraudsters that an open opportunity for hacking may be on the horizon. Given consumers most likely have a high number of online shopping accounts (with the same password, in most cases) that store their critical personal data, this information can easily become available for cybercriminals. These fraudsters now have the ability to implement elaborate scams to access consumers' accounts, bypassing standard security measures.
- Remote Working: Adapting existing controls to the remote working environment, the use of data and analytics in monitoring risks, and the proper balance between human and technological oversight will become more important as the 'new normal' takes hold. Compliance with regulatory controls should remain high priority for businesses, otherwise they create opportunity for criminals and risk regulatory investigations, leading to fiscal and reputational damages in the future. For many businesses, existing training on preventing wire fraud and other criminal attacks will need to be reinforced.
- Charity Scams: One of the most disheartening online trends has been the effort to steal funds from individuals who are sympathetic to a cause and who willingly give money to what they think is an organization that is aligned with their beliefs. In charity scams, criminals have begun to impersonate nonprofits affiliated with the pandemic or civil rights organization. To mitigate this type of risk, internal and external awareness is, once again, a major defense for this kind of scam. Armed with information, consumers can make more informed decisions about their charitable giving. For your organization's risk teams, increased monitoring of outgoing funds to pandemic-related charities may help identify this type of activity.
- Product Scams: Possibly the most difficult of scams to identify and measure are those related to product purchases. These scams are difficult to pinpoint because the scam involves selling consumer products with questionable or no efficacy. This can include products that appear to be for COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, cures, or home testing kits. Even if the capabilities of the product are not backed by measurable and repeatable results, the buyer themselves may perceive the benefits of the product. Given the variables involved with these product claims and the subjective nature involved with how the product works for each buyer, raising awareness with consumers is once again the most powerful defense.
- Investment Scams: COVID-19 investment scams are luring consumers into investing by claiming that their stocks will sharply increase as a direct result of the effect their products will have on the pandemic. Individuals who invest in these scams have a substantial risk of being involved in a "pump and dump" investment scheme. These scams can be effectively perpetrated through online messaging channels and direct call channels, and once again, awareness is the best defense. Informing account holders about these types of schemes may keep them from purchasing these risky investments.
© eFraud Prevention, LLC. Additional sources for this article include: Total Retail, Loss Prevention Magazine, UK Finance Limited, Informa Tech, and Computer Weekly.
2020 Fraud Predictions
- Deep fake technology for identity fraud: This technology will be used to attack call centers and for business email compromise scams.
- ID Mules: Identity mules are real people who wish to boost their credit score, new-to-credit users like students and immigrants who wish to build a good FICO score, etc. They'll knowingly or unknowingly give their identity to cyber criminals to open fake accounts. The result may be similar to current synthetic ID schemes but based on a completely legit starting point.
- FinTech companies will be the next big target: The fintech sector, which has largely escaped the abuse of fraudsters, will begin to see a sharp increase in online fraud.
- Chatbot and voice assistance payment fraud will rise: As soon as these 24/7 convenience technologies begin to functionality that can move money from a user's account - they'll be targeted by criminals and will need to be protected against account takeover.
- P2P fraud increases: P2P attacks will escalate as social engineering imposters will be at the receiving end of P2P money transfers. This will result in real users suffering from higher friction as fraud levels surge.
- Business Email Compromise will include more Direct Deposit Fraud: A fraudster will trick an HR or Payroll employee to update direct deposit information in order to re-route an employee's paycheck.
- The US will join the UK to protect authorized push payment victims: Victims in authorized push payment scams will get their money back, even if the victim was somehow at fault.
- Wire fraud grows and becomes harder to detect: FBI data shows a 700% growth in this area over the last five years.
- Account takeover will increase: Account takeover is essentially doubling each year as criminals become more technically savvy and automated. For example, mobile account takeover through SIM swap fraud doubled from 360,000 cases to more than 680,000 cases in a year. With billions of records being leaked each year online, cybercriminals are using sophisticated bots to automate account takeover attempts.
- Fraud makes its way into pop culture and social networks: Popular culture and social media are making fraudulent methods more common and easier to access, leading to more fraud attacks against banks, lenders and finance companies.
- Synthetic identity will continue to rise: Synthetic identity theft is the fastest-growing financial crime in the US.
- Fake check scams: Fake check scams are up 65 percent since 2015 and this trend will continue to rise. Most fake check scams involve a job offer, an income opportunity of some kind or involve selling items online.
- Imposter scams rake in the most money: Phishing/Vishing/Smishing/Pharming are the methods used for the most profitable scams. This includes: BEC/EAC, Confidence Fraud/Romance and Spoofing.
- Targeted ransomware attacks on the rise: In 2020, we will witness an increase of targeted ransomware attacks. Criminals will use the dark web to gather intelligence on employees and organizations with poor cyber hygiene.
- IoT devices under attack: The huge number of IoT devices, along with the 5G networks roll out, will dramatically increase the number of attacks against smart devices.
- AI-based attacks: Criminal hackers will use A.I. to adapt in real-time to the defense responses of the organizations they are attacking.
- Compromised credentials and data breaches: Credential stuffing will become a popular money-making method for cybercriminals.
- Cybercrime-as-a-service: Among the numerous services offered in the cybercrime underground, ransomware-as-a-service platforms, DDoS-for-hire platforms and spamming services will facilitate the emergence of new criminal organizations and speeds up the operations of existing ones.
- Phishing kit developers will offer more refined products: Phishing kit developers will offer more refined products, further lowering the skill required to launch a phishing campaign. Attackers are improving the quality of their phishing campaigns by minimizing or hiding common signs of a phish.
- Ransomware attacks: Ransomware developers will make their code more evasive so that they can establish a foothold in a system, encrypt more data without being noticed, and possibly scale operations to other networks.
Anti-fraud compliance obligations include the creation and ongoing maintenance of an effective consumer fraud prevention program. We are often told by our bank and credit union clients that our service is applauded and encouraged when the FDIC and NCUA regulatory agencies perform their audits.
"Financial institutions should implement an enhanced customer education to increase awareness of the fraud risk and effective techniques customers can use to mitigate the risk." ~ FFIEC
"Consumer education is critical...Publish details of localized scams via online banking websites. Scam alerts can be powerful tools in educating your client base." ~ FICO
"One easy way to curb this fraud is through more education and awareness." ~ Department of Justice
"Develop an awareness framework that challenges, educates and empowers your customers and employees to be part of the human firewall." ~ FS-ISAC
"Teach your older members: When fraud comes knocking, don't answer."
~ NCUA
"The FDIC encourages financial institutions, government agencies, consumer organizations, educators, the media, and anyone else to help make the tips and information in FDIC Consumer News widely available." ~ FDIC
"FinCEN strongly supports efforts to raise awareness of elder abuse -particularly financial exploitation of the elderly." ~ FinCEN
"Develop and distribute fraud prevention resources and conduct outreach." ~ FINRA
"The banking industry should leverage anti-fraud resources to help customers protect themselves." ~ American Banking Association
"Employee and customer education is the key...the problem many institutions face, however, relates to lacking resources and dedicated support for truly integrated educational campaigns and programs." ~ Financial Services Roundtable
"Armed with the right knowledge, almost anyone can recognize a fraudulent scheme and make the right decision to stay away."
~ United States Postal Inspector Service
"People are often seen as the weakest link when it comes to cyber security, but that must change." ~ UK National Cyber Security Centre