Identity fraud at center of many digital COVID-19 scams

Phishing is the top digital fraud scheme worldwide related to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to TransUnion’s Consumer Financial Hardship studies. Among consumers reporting being targeted with digital COVID-19 schemes globally, 27% said they were hit with pandemic-themed phishing scams.

“From the impacts of phishing and other well documented COVID-19 scams like unemployment fraud, it’s clear that fraudsters have the data and increasing opportunities to create synthetic identities and utilize stolen identities,” said Shai Cohen, senior vice president of Global Fraud & Identity Solutions at TransUnion. “Identity fraud is a primary way fraudsters leverage stolen consumer data from phishing and other social engineering schemes. It can have long-term impacts for consumers such as the compromise of multiple online accounts and bringing down credit scores, which we anticipate will increase during pandemic reconstruction.”

To better understand the impacts of COVID-19 on consumers, TransUnion surveyed 7,384 adults in Canada, Colombia, Hong Kong, South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S. between June 30 and July 6, 2020. It asked the consumers if they had been targeted by digital COVID-19 fraud and if so, which digital fraud scheme(s) related to COVID-19 were they targeted with. Globally, 32% said they had been targeted by digital fraud related to COVID-19 with the below being the top types of COVID-19 fraud they faced:

Table 1: Top Global Online COVID-19 Scams Targeting Consumers

Source: TransUnion

Table 2: Online COVID-19 Scams Targeting Consumers by Country

Source: TransUnion

“Although the schemes may vary by country, a new approach to identity verification that supplements traditional authentication methods is needed to defend against their impact,” said Cohen. “The key is creating a friction-right experience where consumers are confident they are dealing with a legitimate organization or business.”

TransUnion Enhancement to Combat Identity Fraud

With fake identities increasingly available through phishing attacks and other methods, TransUnion recently expanded the global reach of its ‘Document Verification’ solution. Document Verification confirms a consumer’s identity in faceless and in-person channels by validating a government-issued identification document like a passport or driver’s license.

“With successful phishing attacks that have increased during the pandemic, data breaches and social media sharing, consumers should assume their data is on the dark web,” said Bala Kumar, vice president of product management, Global Fraud & Identity Solutions at TransUnion. “Despite these threats, consumers expect that organizations will protect their identities, and enable secure but still convenient digital experiences. TransUnion’s Document Verification solution provides comprehensive consumer friendly identity verification by triangulating the validity of the document, danger of the device used to capture the document and risk associated with the identity on the document.”

Document Verification is part of ‘IDVision with iovation’, TransUnion’s flagship identity verification, consumer authentication and fraud prevention solution suite which unites personal and digital data into one of the most comprehensive data identity platforms in the world. As part of the IDVision with iovation suite, Document Verification adds strong verification of government IDs to existing capabilities that can validate a consumer by leveraging TransUnion’s comprehensive intelligence about consumer records, device behavior, and if fraud has previously been associated with a person or device.

“Given the digital transformation that’s been accelerated by the recent pandemic, it’s more important than ever to secure trust in faceless channels with a simple consumer experience by reducing the need for businesses to manually review transactions,” said Shirley Inscoe, senior analyst at technology analyst firm Aite Group.

TransUnion’s Document Verification solution verifies consumers who submit a picture of a government-issued identification document. The solution provides organizations additional confirmation of a consumer identity during account origination and subsequent high-risk transactions.

Document Verification ensures that a government issued identification is genuine by:

• Validating the expiration date, and if the identification document is fake, lost, stolen or tampered with
• Confirming the personally identifiable information (PII) in the identification document matches against TransUnion’s data identity of the consumer like an address and flagging any discrepancies
• Enabling real-time fraud risk checks on the device used to capture the document
• In some markets, verifying an ID matches against a government’s database of issued IDs.

The solution also provides an optional feature that compares a selfie the consumer captures to the photo on their identification document. Document Verification can be deployed via TransUnion hosted pages enabling rapid deployment which is critical with the accelerated shift to digital channels.