Authorized fraud rising and ID theft victim support to decline in 2025

It is the end of 2024 and as we gear up for the new year, we can also expect a bounty of predictions. Will Liverpool win the Premier League? Could AI become general? Will the new Superman movie be good? All these things are up in the air but a crop of new reports are making educated predictions on trends in fraud, digital identity and the regulatory environment for 2025.

First up is the Veriff Identity Fraud Report, which promises “everything you need to know about the state of online fraud in 2025 – and what you can do to prevent it.” The main findings from their 2025 Identity Fraud Report depict an increasing fraud challenge, that fraud follows the money, that fraudsters are targeting ecommerce platforms, and that impersonation attacks still dominate.

“Financial services, where there are the richest of pickings for fraudsters, remains one of the industries most likely to be targeted by fraudulent attacks,” the report reads. Authorized fraud, where a user is tricked into performing an identity verification session, is far more prevalent for banks, crypto platforms, payments providers, and other fintech platforms, Veriff finds, with rates coming in “at more than double the global average.”

However, the one industry that suffered even more authorized fraud than financial services was ecommerce – “this was the number one industry to suffer at the hands of authorized fraud scams, and by a considerable margin: more than 18 times the global average,” the report said. Veriff also found that impersonation fraud amounted to more than 82 percent of all the fraudulent attempts it saw this year, making it a particularly acute problem.

As for predictions for 2025, Veriff pointed to the rise of face swaps to defeat biometric checks, lip syncing, GANS and autoencoders, and perhaps most intriguingly, “puppets.” This latter biometric spoof is when a video records the desired movements of an actor, or the “master,” which is then overlaid onto a video of the target subject, with the “puppet” then appearing to move like the master. It’s difficult to detect and can defeat active liveness solutions, according to Veriff.

For more on that and for in-depth data the full Veriff Identity Fraud Report can be found here.

The US and identity theft — 2024 and 2025

For a report focused on the U.S., the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) has “2025 Predictions and 2024 Predictions Recap,” which charts policy and regulatory movements across U.S. Congress over the past year and predicts the year ahead.

Interestingly, the ITRC self-audits how its 2024 predictions compared with the actual reality of what transpired over the past year. A prediction that ITRC made for 2024 was that privacy concerns over the use of biometrics will overshadow the legitimate use cases. The organization compared this to the reality: “It’s complicated,” the report reads.

“Efforts to block biometric use by some members of Congress failed, but a majority (62 percent) of U.S. residents said they had serious concerns about biometric use to verify their identity. Still 90 percent of respondents in an ITRC survey said they provided a biometric when asked,” it continues.

As for 2025 predictions, the ITRC makes some bleak ones. Case one: “Reduced victim support and less law enforcement focus will translate into increased identity crimes.” The organization puts this down to deprioritization of identity crime prevention, cybercrime enforcement, cybersecurity regulations, and victim assistance program funding due to “federal government priorities under the new administration” referring to the incoming Trump leadership.

Another grim prediction is that the cybercrime job market will “boom,” according to the center, with the hiring increase attributed to professional cybercrime organizations gearing up to take advantage of AI and the lack of enforceable cybersecurity standards in the U.S. For more predictions and looks at self-regulation and state regulators and so on, you can read the full ITRC report here.

Consumers feel safer with biometrics

Experian’s 2024 Global Identity and Fraud Report dives deep into the current state of fraud, revealing the tension between security and providing a seamless customer experience.

The report gives AI, synthetic identity fraud, and machine learning close looks and delivers five key takeaways. One major concern for businesses, the report summarizes, is Authorized Push Payment Fraud, which GenAI tools help to enable. Another key takeaway is that biometrics provide consumers with the highest sense of security for verification and authentication, while on the other hand consumers still have “low confidence” in businesses’ ability to recognize them online.

The 2024 Global Identity and Fraud Report uses research from across the globe, making use of extensive data. Those wanting to view Experian’s assessment can download the full report here.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  Experian  |  first-party fraud  |  fraud prevention  |  Identity Theft Resource Center  |  Veriff