What is Identity theft & Identity fraud?
Identity theft and identity fraud are two different terms often used in the same context but carry a slight difference. Identity theft is a deceptive technique where scammers employ social engineering tactics and phishing attempts to steal someone’s sensitive information. On the other hand, ID fraud refers to leveraging stolen information to carry out illicit endeavors and conduct potential financial transactions. In the United States, ID theft has been declared a federal crime, and unlawfully utilizing someone else’s information would be defined as a violation of the law. ID fraud takes place in various forms including account takeover fraud, ID card fraud, and unemployment fraud.
Exploring the Roadmap: How Does Identity Fraud Take Place?
Cybercriminals have become sophisticated with technological advancements, they have advanced their tactics to trick unsuspecting individuals into revealing personal information. The acquired information is further used for conducting multiple illicit activities like tax fraud, ID card fraud, unemployment fraud, and bank fraud.
A few deceptive tactics employed by scammers are briefed
- Phishing Attempts: Scammers deceive people by sending deceptive emails pretending to be contacting from legitimate banks or government bodies and plead sensitive information. Unaware people end up disclosing personal information and suffer financial as well as psychological damage.
- Social Engineering: It refers to a psychologically manipulative technique where fraudsters coax naive individuals to share their personally identifiable information (PII) and utilize the obtained information for plentiful objectives.
- Surfing: Various sources such as social media platforms, digital platforms, and public records, are used by malicious actors to collect sensitive information about targeted victims. Information like names, addresses, or financial information is gathered by surfing and used to open fake bank or loan accounts. ‘Shoulder surfing’ is a type of surfing where perpetrators collect sensitive information by closely observing the victims.
ID Card Fraud Surpassed all other forms: 2023 Document Fraud
A study reveals that ID card fraud emerged as the most prevalent form in 2023 out of all other forms of fraud. It accounted for 46.8% of all document fraud owing to its less protective measures, rendering it an easy target for bad actors. As ID cards are developed for national purposes, they don’t comply with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), thus deemed less secure. Other forms that incorporate document fraud include passport, driving license, tax ID, and resident permit fraud.
Is Biometric Data Prone to Identity Theft?
Biometrics including fingerprints, facial features, and behavioral analysis, are considered secure authentication methods, as each individual has unique biological characteristics. With technological advancements, scammers are upgrading their illicit endeavors to target victims and steal their biometric data. Using face swapping, and spoofing attempts, fraudsters can get access to facial features and conduct various crimes. It’s examined that the rate of biometric fraud has drastically increased compared to previous years, marking 21.9% in 2023 and 1.15% in 2022.
Identity fraud Verification solutions must integrate advanced AI algorithms and use strong pieces of evidence to authenticate the identity. Liveness detection and biometric matching accuracy can facilitate IDV tools to ensure the claimed identity is genuine and alive, preventing scammers from trying to get access using stolen identities.
Effective Strategies for Identity Fraud Prevention
Scammers have undoubtedly advanced their tactics and even dodge identity verification tools, however, it’s likely to prevent potential ID fraud by taking robust preventive measures.
Spot Red Flags
This is the most basic step to avoid falling victim to the sneaky maneuver of scammers and look for avoidable lapses made by the fraudster. As scammers may approach you via phone calls, emails, or text messages, seek errors in these modes of communication, there is surely something that does not resemble the genuine entity and this can lead to spotting the deceptive identities.
Secure Online Accounts
Most individuals use their names or date of birth as their account passwords. Once the perpetrators get to know about your personally identifiable information (PII). It gets more obvious for scammers to utilize your credentials to log in to online accounts which may be bank accounts, retail accounts, or social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and X. To counter this scam, employ strong and unique passwords that are hard to figure out by fraudsters and accounts remain safe & secure.
Keep Track of Credit Report
Monitoring your bank accounts and continuously evaluating credit card statements can save you from the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Scammers get access to your information by conducting identity theft and utilizing the acquired information to conduct potential transactions. If such transactions are not observed, they ultimately make large transactions. Spotting any suspicious activity at the start can assist you in preventing such financial loss.
Minimize Digital Footprint
Digital footprint refers to the trace of records of individuals’ activity in the digital world, it could be any data available online including social media images, sent or received emails, shopping details, and visited websites. Scammers purportedly get access to your digital footprints and exploit them in many ways. That’s why, it’s crucial to lessen your digital footprint to avoid falling victim to scammers’ sneaky endeavors.
Wrap-Up
Identity fraud is substantially increasing with each passing day and leaves negative consequences on the mental health of individuals and also affects financial integrity. Individuals must take effective precautionary measures to safeguard themselves against identity theft. To ensure effective identity fraud detection, IDV tools must integrate liveness detection and sophisticated AI algorithms to detect real identities and thwart fake identities.