As COVID-19 lockdowns lift, fraudsters shift focus

What’s the impact on digital fraud as countries ease COVID-19 lockdown restrictions? We recently analyzed billions of transactions in our flagship identity proofing, risk-based authentication and fraud analytics solution suite — TransUnion TruValidate™ — and found the rate of suspected digital fraud attempts across industries rose 16.5% globally when comparing Q2 2020 and Q2 2021.¹ In the US, the percentage of digital fraud attempts increased at a similar rate of 17.1% during the same time period.

As fraud attempts on businesses and consumers continue to rise, fraudsters are pivoting to target industries with growing markets. “It’s quite common for fraudsters to shift focus every few months from one industry to another,” said Shai Cohen, Senior Vice President of Global Fraud Solutions at TransUnion.

For example, when looking at financial services, online fraud attempt rates had risen 149% when comparing the last four months of 2020 to the first four months of 2021. Yet, when comparing Q2 2021 to Q2 2020, the rate of suspected online financial services fraud attempts has risen at a much lower rate of 38.3% in the US (18.8% globally).

 

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