Globally, fraudsters are shifting their focus from financial services to gaming, travel and leisure, according to Trans-latest Union’s quarterly report.
It stated this as digital fraud efforts against companies and consumers increased.
Comparing the second quarter of this year to the same period last year, suspected digital fraud attempts increased by 16.5% worldwide. Globally, gaming and travel & leisure were the most impacted sectors, with attempted digital fraud reaching 393 percent and 1559 percent respectively.
During the same time, South African transactions saw a 12.3% reduction in digital fraud.
The incidence of suspected digital fraud attempts increased by 922,7% in the online gaming business. The travel and leisure sector grew 264.2 percent.
TransUnion’s Shai Cohen, SVP of global fraud solutions, said it was customary for fraudsters to switch industries every few months.
“Fraudsters prefer to target sectors with high transaction growth. Travel and other leisure activities grew more popular this quarter, and scammers definitely targeted this market. Fraudsters’ aim alters as this burgeoning sector becomes a greater target, according to Cohen.
Financial services, health care, insurance, retail, and travel and leisure sectors are among those TransUnion monitors. TransUnion TruValidate’s flagship identity-proofing, risk-based authentication, and fraud analytics product package analyzes data from billions of transactions and over 40 000 websites and applications.
TransUnion cited financial services as one example of fraudsters’ shifting emphasis. Comparing the first four months of this year to the same period last year, global financial services online fraud attempts increased 149%. Comparing the second quarter of this year to the same period last year, the worldwide rate of suspected online financial services fraud attempts jumped 18.8%, while those from South Africa decreased by 54.6 percent.
In the second quarter of this year, one in three customers reported being targeted by a digital fraud scheme relating to Covid-19.
In a June TransUnion Consumer Pulse poll, 36% of worldwide respondents stated they had been targeted by fraudsters in Covid-19-related digital scams. In South Africa, 41% of respondents indicated they were targeted.