Say Goodbye To Cleaning Up After Fraud
Collected weekly fraud stories can often read like a dispiriting parade of bad news, so let’s begin on a good note this week. Facebook, no stranger to fraud problems, this week delivered an important (and positive!) update on their community standards enforcement efforts:
2.19B fake accounts banned in Q1 2019 alone. That’s a heroic effort, and one to be applauded. But it’s a cautionary tale as well. Fraud is scaling ever faster, and only the most advanced fraud solutions can stay ahead of the pace.
If there are any lingering doubts about the speed and scale of modern fraud, recent numbers reported on this week by Infosecurity should put those to bed:
300% increase in fraud attacks from rogue mobile applications. That’s … significant.
That said, we shouldn’t really be surprised. So much of our life has migrated online, yet by and large, we haven’t really changed our approach to fraud. Far too many current prevention solutions are still reactive — they only respond to the known. That’s a problem. Especially when millions of users have given their data to platforms like Instagram:
Breaches like this are a veritable feeding frenzy for fraudsters looking for new ammunition in their war against our safety and security.
Where is encryption in all this? Apparently, nowhere:
Reading that article might give you hope — deploy encryption effectively, and all will be well.
Not so fast, says a new article from PaymentsSource:
Let’s get back to the good news, and bookend this post with some positivity. Earlier this week, DataVisor’s own Sean McDermott reported on the success our clients are seeing upon embracing a new approach to fraud management:
“DataVisor works with enterprise clients across industries to detect and defeat mass registration fraud. One such client — a global online marketplace operating in 40+ countries, with over 350 million monthly active users — was enduring an onslaught of mass-registered accounts that were threatening the long-term success of the platform by significantly degrading customer experience, tarnishing brand reputation, and draining finances. What made these attacks particularly challenging to defend against was their combination of speed and patience. 60% of fraudulent accounts were being used in attacks within two hours of having been created, while other accounts were remaining dormant for weeks after registration before being deployed. Choosing to partner with DataVisor on a new approach had an immediate and highly positive impact. Overall fraud detection rates rose by more than 20%, and nearly 90% of fraudulent attacks were detected before a first attack was ever committed.”
The choice is up to us. We can continue to rely on reactive solutions that curse us to cleaning up the aftermaths of savage fraud attacks, or we can leverage the power of AI and machine learning to spot and stop fraud before it happens.
We’ll see how the world answers that question next week when we invite you to a new edition of This Week in Fraud Trends!
