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Fraud and data breaches have always had a close, if destructive, relationship. As the US transitioned to hard-to-counterfeit EMV payment card technology several years ago, criminals flocked to card not present (CNP) fraud, often combining identity fragments and card numbers stolen in breaches to make illicit purchases online. Five years later, data breaches and downst…

Spoiler alert: If you are watching Game of Thrones (GoT), but aren't fully caught up, you may want to read this later! In the past 6-12 months, synthetic identity fraud has skyrocketed and has been one of the hottest topics in the financial crimes domain. At the same time, whether it’s Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead, zombies have surged in popularity to play sta…

If, like me, you’re a parent of young children, you know the routines and priorities: feed, bathe, vaccinate, read to, save for college, and choose your toddler battles wisely. But, no matter how young or old your children may be, there’s one important task you should not neglect: freeze their credit. Why? Child identity fraud is an alarmingly large and growing pro…

At FICO, we have the privilege of working with the smartest, most innovative folks in the financial industry on the thorniest, most complex problems facing the industry. This work is challenging, rewarding, and frequently filled with fascinating conversations. For your benefit, we will periodically reproduce these conversations in FICO blog posts. Today’s post…

With people spending more and more time on their mobile phones — an average of three hours and 15 minutes on their phones every day, with the top 20% of smartphone users spending upwards of four and a half hours — “everything mobile” is driving digital transformation. Unfortunately, new fraud opportunities have come along f…

There has been a proliferation of real-time payments fraud, as new near-instant payment platforms, including person-to-person (P2P) transfers and mobile payment platforms grow across Asia Pacific.  We recently conducted a survey with banks in the region and found that 4 out of 5 (78 percent) have seen their fraud losses increase. Further to this, almost a q…

Like most, I started off the new year with a multitude of resolutions, and almost immediately followed that with inevitable procrastination. But I’m not going to let that keep me down. I am going to keep looking forward – especially when it comes to 2020 predictions for fraud and financial crime. This year my brilliant colleagues – Doug Clare, Frank Holzenthal, and TJ…

Did you know that more than one million American children were victims of identity fraud in 2017? This shocking statistic was a major driver for me to pore over article after article, looking for the causes and solutions – and put on my hat as both a fraud fighter and a parent.  In my research, I learned that two-thirds of the children whose identities we…

The fight against fraud is constantly evolving because of the new approaches taken by fraudsters. 2019 was a year full of innovative methods to fight fraud, and we covered these on the FICO Blog. Check out the top 5 fraud blog posts which garnered the most views in 2019. 5 Reasons Why AML is More Important Than Ever in 2019 Timothy Choon explains in his…

With COVID-19 restricting people’s ability or willingness to engage in face-to-face interactions, banks are looking to their digital channels for continued growth. Key to providing acceptable customer experiences is the way in which banks verify that applicants are who they say they are. Identity verification, required to prevent fraud and meet eKYC regulatory require…

In this final installment of my recent video interview with Jesse Gossman - a Police Detective in South Florida, Certified Fraud Examiner, and president of the counter-fraud consulting group Bottom Line Fraud - we discuss how the culture of perceived legitimacy and legality for CPNs fuels one of the largest challenges for fighting synthetic identity fraud. Financial i…

Traditionally, credit application fraud has been perpetrated in two ways: First-party fraud – where the criminal uses their own identity to commit fraud, even if they obscure some details in order to prevent detection. This type of fraud is self-limiting and while fraudsters have stolen significant sums, an organization is unlikely to fall victim to the same fra…