Shufti Pro Warns About Phishing in 2021 Fraud Report

Shufti Pro has released a new Global ID Fraud Report that indicates that fraud has continued to climb during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company placed the overall fraud rate at 21 percent in 2020, and that has now jumped another three percent over the course of 2021.

According to Shufti Pro, those numbers speak to the growing sophistication of fraudsters, and to the vulnerability of a remote work environment. People are opening roughly 30 percent of the phishing emails that get sent every day, and click on the malware link in that those emails 12 percent of the time. That is a phenomenal rate of return given the sheer volume of phishing fraud, which is why Shufti believes that phishing will be an increasingly popular method of attack for cybercriminals heading into 2022.

Shufti also predicted a spike in identity fraud, and in the use of cryptocurrencies and other virtual assets for money laundering purposes. On that front, the company noted that synthetic IDs, account takeovers, and impersonation were common fraud strategies in 2021, and that millions of dollars were laundered through virtual assets during the past year. Fraudsters are still making counterfeit documents, though those forgeries are now part of a much more complex and multi-pronged identity fraud strategy.

“We are surprised to see the remarkable turn of fraudsters from simple manipulation of identity documents to tech-driven tampering to dodge identity verification,” said Shufti Pro CEO Victor Fredung. “As we move on to 2022, I would advise businesses in every industry to employ robust mechanisms to combat identity thieves and financial criminals.”

The findings in the Shufti Pro report are based on 11 months of identity verification activity. The company is best known for its remote onboarding solution, which uses face and document verification to confirm the authenticity of an ID and match it to a selfie of the owner. The solution was listed on the Salesforce AppExchange in May of 2021.

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February 23, 2022 – by Eric Weiss