CIFAS, the UK’s fraud protection service, has just issued its quarterly fraud trends.
It suggests that account takeover fraud continues to grow at a rate.
CIFAS reported a 40pc increase in account takeovers during the first half of 2009, continuing the upward trend first highlighted in February 2008, when the organisation witnessed a 207pc rise in the number of recorded instances of account takeover.
Phil D’Angio, director at VeriSign, a security and internet infrastructure company says: “These latest figures show that account takeover is clearly a serious and growing problem. Recent research by YouGov shows that the vast majority (91pc) of us are concerned about identity theft, with 11pc of respondents feeling the need to use between 11 and 30 separate passwords to decrease the chance of fraud and identity theft. But setting up a plethora of different log-ins and passwords for every single account you control online can be time consuming – and requires a very good memory.
Strong authentication offers a more effective way of securing your digital identity. It combines information the user knows – log-in details – with a one-time password (OTP) generated by a device. The OTP can be sent to you on your mobile via a secure application, or could be generated by a token, credit card or key fob. This combination makes it very difficult for e-criminals to gain authorised access to accounts and information, because the thieves must have not only the username and password, but the consumer’s physical credential as well.
"We now live in a world where online threats are growing daily. Security is appearing ever-higher on the consumer agenda, and businesses need to offer a safe environment to users of their services or customers will simply vote with their feet, and refuse to transact with them online. Strong authentication is one very efficient way of helping to prevent account takeover and ID theft, which can help to ease the security concerns of both consumers and businesses.”
