The 800% Rise in Shipping Fraud Suggests It’s High Tide for Digital Prevention

As fraudsters ride the ceaseless tsunami of online transactions, responsible businesses and consumers must develop new methods of more effectively monitoring and managing risk.

An eye-opening issue

At first glance, the stats are shocking — a 780.5% year-over-year (YoY) global increase in shipping fraud in 2021 — but closer analysis reveals some interesting insights. Let’s take a deeper dive.

Shipping fraud is when a buyer spoofs a shipping address or when a seller receives payment but never ships; it’s most common in the logistics industry where online consumers rely on third parties for transportation and delivery.

Not surprising

Given ecommerce has seen exponential growth since the COVID pandemic, we shouldn’t be surprised that digital criminals have changed tack to take advantage of more people spending more time and money online.

Worth noting from the most recent 2022 Global Digital Fraud Trends Report is nearly half of all consumers surveyed conduct most of their transactions online — from managing personal finances and shopping to running a business.

The same TransUnion report reveals other types of fraud showing significant increases are business identity theft (+113.8%), and identity mining and phishing (+104.8%).

Again, we shouldn’t be surprised, but most practitioners of fraud prevention would agree we should be better prepared to protect and prevent such attempts.

The Philippines figures

At home, fraud in the travel and leisure industry increased 69% followed by communities (online dating, forums, etc.) up 18.2% and gaming up 11.6%.

Year-over-Year growth Rates of Digital Fraud Attempts (2020 - 2021)

Our biggest threat

While advances in digital banking and ewallet services have enabled more Filipinos to formally participate in the financial system, fraudsters have shadowed the shifts in consumer behavior. Today, the number one fraud in financial services is identity theft — where a fraudster steals the details of a real person to commit illegal transactions.

Our best hope

Fortunately for reputable companies and responsible consumers, there’s a way to simply and effectively mitigate this ever-rising tide of digital fraud risk.

Through digital protection products, such as MyIdentity, consumers can gain the security of knowing when someone tries to use their details to apply for credit or loans.

Retail businesses and credit lenders can automatically leverage the intelligence from billions of transactions and more than 40,000 websites and apps in our flagship identity proofing, risk-based authentication and fraud analytics solution suite – TruValidate™.

Deploying a robust authentication process, streamlined technology and multilayered identity solutions is the most effective and efficient way to help build trust with digitally demanding customers while frustrating fraudsters.

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Download the report for more information and insights on local and global fraud trends.