Pattie Dillon and Mike Russell Launch New Article About Synthetic Identity Fraud

Pattie Dillon and Mike Russell released an article outlining the growing risk of synthetic identities. Juniper Research forecasts by 2023 losses from online payment fraud would reach $48 billion annually, citing synthetic identities as a primary contributor.

June 4, 2019 / / —

If fraud is more of a zombie horde to be fought continuously than a dragon to be slain once, then it’s time for fraud teams to sharpen their blades. Synthetic identities, the digital undead, are gathering strength.

With every data breach, fraudsters gain more material with which to combine attributes of consumers’ breached records—names, dates of birth, government ID numbers, etc.—into synthetic identities for account creations or fraudulent transactions.

Read the full article at https://news.cardnotpresent.com/news/synthetic-identities-the-zombie-apocalypse-for-our-time

Targeted organizations struggle to detect synthetic identities because there’s no single source of truth about real consumers’ personally identifying information (PII). Fraudsters can mash together newly stolen PII with previously breached PII to create multiple new identities.

The scheme has inflicted hellacious losses. In 2016, synthetic identities were blamed for up to 20 percent of credit losses ($6 billion). In December 2018, Juniper Research forecast that losses from online payment fraud would reach $48 billion annually by 2023, and cited synthetic identities as a primary contributor.

In January, McKinsey & Co. estimated that 5% of profiles in a consumer-marketing database were suspect. For example, one profile had two distinct names linked to the same phone number, the sole provided email address was just months old, and the oldest digital record was less than a year old.

McKinsey’s findings echoed a proprietary study conducted at Compromised. In a random sample of 55,000 records, 3% qualified as potential synthetic identities.

‘Wait,’ you might be thinking, ‘some breaches occurred years ago. That decayed data can’t be as useful to fraudsters as freshly breached data, can it?’

Social security numbers never expire. (The deceased’s social security numbers are still unearthed for identity theft).

In the case of login credentials—username-password combinations—researchers using a ground-truth dataset of 28.8 million users and their 61.5 million passwords in 107 services over 8 years found that “40% of the users are reusing the same passwords leaked more than three years ago.”

The same compromised email could be used in ten applications or transactions with ten companies and appear each time as part of an entirely novel identity.

Once the fraudster knows the password to the email account, he can simply set up a filter to archive or delete the emails that would signal his presence. The email owner may never know someone else is using their email.

Vigilant organizations may monitor for breached records, but they would be better served by integrating four Key Risk Indicators for synthetic identities into their fraud teams’ manual review protocol. Those that lack the resources to aggregate, authenticate, verify, compare and link records across breaches should consider integrating a risk intelligence service that specializes in compromised credentials. Properly implemented, it reduces risk, protects revenue and reputation, and shields users.

Think of it like an assistant zombie slayer.

Read the full article at https://news.cardnotpresent.com/news/synthetic-identities-the-zombie-apocalypse-for-our-time

Pattie Dillon is a Consultant, Strategist, Director and SME Fraud Prevention. Connect with her at https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattie-dillon/

Mike Russell is a freelance writer and strategist for online fraud prevention companies. Learn more about him at https://pivotalwriting.com/

Contact Info:
Name: Pattie Dillon
Email: Send Email
Organization: Compromised
Phone: 4129997455
Website: https://www.compromised.com/

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Release ID: 519251