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Identity theft, fraud cost consumers more than $16 billion
Feb 01, 2017
Some 15.4 million consumers were victims of identity theft or fraud last year, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. That’s up 16 percent from 2015, and the highest figure recorded since the firm began tracking fraud instances in 2004.
Card-not-present fraud — transactions made online or via phone where the cardholder does not need to present the physical card to complete the purchase — jumped the most, increasing 40 percent compared to 2015. Account takeover fraud — where thieves used stolen login information to access a consumer’s accounts — rose 31 percent, and instances where fraudsters opened new accounts in a consumer’s name were up 20 percent.
In all, thieves stole $16 billion, the report found — nearly $1 billion more than in 2015.
Some 47% of U.S. adults have reported identity theft over the past two years, while the fraud’s toll ballooned to $712.4 billion in 2020, up 42% from 2019, according to a report released Tuesday by Aite Group, a Boston-based research and consulting firm, and sponsored by Giact, an Allen, Texas-based financial-services security firm.
What if you sent $500 to a stranger by mistake and that person refused to give back your money? That’s the shocking situation in which Rossin Asilo recently found herself.
Using the money transfer app Zelle for the first time, Asilo made a simple typo entering her friend’s phone number. That error dropped the cash intended for a memorial donation into the wrong person’s bank account. Unfortunately, that stranger appears to view the transaction as a $500 windfall and will not return the money.
We predicted that this year, cybercriminals will continue to take advantage of Covid-19-related effects and incidents — such as people’s reliance on online purchases and e-services and the increased need for financial assistance — in order to bait victims and steal critical information. Even though new ways of stealing information regularly arise, tried-and-tested ones are still being actively utilized. We discuss the behaviors and external indicators of some phishing campaigns that we observed from the latter part of December 2020 to the first weeks of January 2021. These campaigns highlight the inclusion of fake online payment forms with the goal of stealing financial information more efficiently.
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Some 47% of U.S. adults have reported identity theft over the past two years, while the fraud’s toll ballooned to $712.4 billion in 2020, up 42% from 2019, according to a report released Tuesday by Aite Group, a Boston-based research and consulting firm, and sponsored by Giact, an Allen, Texas-based financial-services security firm.
What if you sent $500 to a stranger by mistake and that person refused to give back your money? That’s the shocking situation in which Rossin Asilo recently found herself.
Using the money transfer app Zelle for the first time, Asilo made a simple typo entering her friend’s phone number. That error dropped the cash intended for a memorial donation into the wrong person’s bank account. Unfortunately, that stranger appears to view the transaction as a $500 windfall and will not return the money.