As economic conditions shift around the world, it’s crucial to keep a finger on the pulse of the evolving fraud landscape. Our Trust and Safety Architects at Sift share their insights on new abuse tactics and tips for effective fraud prevention—read on to discover the latest fraud-related news in this month’s Digital Trust & Safety Roundup, including NFT account security, romance scams, and content abuse.
Modern-day art thieves target high-value NFTs
As the art market battles NFT-driven fraud, businesses must be prepared for the industry’s trademark speed, velocity, and price fluctuations. Kevin Lee, VP of Trust and Safety at Sift, shares his take on how galleries and collectors can protect themselves, stressing the importance of account security and on-platform payment protocols.
“Email is one of the worst places to store personal identifiable information. It’s not anonymized or encrypted in any fashion. This is the main reason that many industries have shifted away from email transactions and towards buying and selling on an e-commerce platform. Email transactions are becoming less and less common across all of e-commerce, mainly because many merchants are moving to a proper ‘shopping cart,’ where you can check out, and put in your credit card information. From a security standpoint, all that stuff is anonymized,” said Lee.
Read more on Artsy.
Crypto scammers prey on online daters
Jane Lee, Trust and Safety Architect at Sift, discusses how she went undercover to expose a crypto romance scam called Pig Butchering, in which scammers con online daters into investing in illegitimate crypto trading platforms. These fraudsters initially shower their victims with compliments, then quickly move the conversation over to an encrypted messaging platform. During her investigative work, Lee found that the scammers are using sophisticated methods to trick digitally-savvy online daters, with half of victims being 41 or younger.
“They talk about how much money they’re making with crypto investments, then they tell you how much you’re missing out. And this is the manipulative part—where they say you’re making bad financial choices by not doing this, and really pushing you to do it. What this does is drive urgency for the user. You really feel like you’re missing out,” said Lee.
“Cryptocurrency is currently in a very volatile state, but there’s been so much talk around crypto, especially during the pandemic. And when we initially started coming out of lockdowns, everyone wanted a piece of it. You heard stories about people making a lot of money from it and I think it really created this perfect storm for victims to fall for it.”
Watch on NBC News NOW and listen to the Marketplace Risk podcast.
Tips for weathering the endless summer of fraud
In our latest podcast episode with Sift Trust and Safety Architect Jeff Sakasegawa, he shares insights on how growing socioeconomic uncertainty is impacting fraud across e-commerce, and what fraud analysts can do to weather the storm.
“Fraudsters love areas of little resistance. And traditionally with businesses, that’s when people want to take their summer holiday. So think shorter staffs and fewer hands on keyboards, that’s when fraudsters want to attack. That’s a lot of fraudster activity coming at businesses. So if you haven’t experienced it yet, be grateful, and get to work. If the house is on fire, it’s time to start working on your defenses and start pushing against that fraudster volume,” said Sakesegawa.
Listen to the podcast.
Content abuse is rising in 2022
From fundraising scams to crypto cons, content abuse is gaining momentum among fraudsters. Across Sift’s global network, we’ve seen significant increases in blocked content fraud over the past year that may signal rising fraud across the board. In order to safeguard community integrity and drive growth, businesses must proactively address fraud—all while reducing friction for legitimate users.
“Blocked content fraud jumped 28% from 2021 to 2022 across Sift’s global network, with 62% of consumers reporting that they encounter scams more frequently than any other type of fraudulent content. Businesses can’t afford to keep treating content abuse like a second-tier risk that comes with the territory; attacks of this nature compromise customer data at scale and cause downstream damage—like widespread account takeover or financial theft across multiple sites and apps,” said Lee.
Read more in The Paypers or watch the webinar.
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