Online shoppers need stronger authentication to fight fraud this Christmas: Prove survey

Christmas is coming and so is the increased likelihood of online shopping scams. A new survey from digital identity company Prove shows that 81 percent of consumers are worried about being defrauded while shopping online this holiday season.

The survey was conducted for Prove by market research company Dynata over 1,000 U.S. consumers. Its findings show that the biggest Christmas boogeyman may be artificial intelligence-based frauds: A vast majority (84 percent) said that they were concerned about fraud such as social engineering schemes, password hacking, deepfakes and voice cloning. The way to reduce password hacking is through multi-factor authentication. Other attack methods can be prevented with digital identity verification, Prove says.

Their concerns appear to be well-founded. According to the survey, over half (51 percent) of the respondents said they have been a victim of identity fraud or know someone who has. Almost one quarter (23 percent) say they have been the victim of a SIM swap attack while more than a third (35 percent) say they have been the victim of a social engineering attack.

While consumers are worried about fraud, they still engage in risky online habits: Almost half (48 percent) said they save their passport in devices while 67 percent said they would shop at an unknown website if the bargain was good enough.

The research also showed that shopping this season is mobile first: 85 percent of consumers said they access their accounts through mobile phones while 59 percent said that authentication through phones is more convenient. The takeaway for Prove is that mobile identity authentication could help mitigate AI-based fraud while also providing a convenient customer experience.

Prove Fraud and Cybercrime Executive Advisor and VP of Client Experience Mary Ann Miller discussed strategies to upgrade authentication for protection against identity theft and synthetic fraud in a Biometric Update webinar last week. The webinar is now available on demand for free with registration.

Article Topics

biometric authentication  |  biometrics  |  ecommerce  |  fraud prevention  |  Prove  |  secure transactions