Cybercrime has become such a regular part of our daily lives that the fact that it continues to rise may be surprising to some. Sure, we all know it’s here and likely not going anywhere, but did you know that it has gone up nearly 100% since 2015 alone? According to the recent ThreatMetrix Q2 2017 cyber-crime report, a key driver is “the rise of new account origination fraud, which has also increased 30% since last quarter.” If the success of your business depends on the acquisition of new and engaged users, there is a silver lining to this data–preventing fraud at account registration isn’t actually that complicated. You should already be doing it.
Account Registration Fraud: 101
When new users are not verified at account registration, companies risk allowing bad actors/fraudsters into their valuable ecosystems. These users disseminate scams, commit credit card fraud, steal confidential information, spam good/valuable users, and more! The damage caused by these types of fraud includes user abandonment, negative brand impact, decreased user base value and loss of revenue. And it all begins at account registration.
New account registration fraud now represents more than one in every ten new users, driven by the increased availability and low cost of stolen identities in the wild. Fraudsters buy and trade stolen identity data to create near-perfect identities that they then use in large-scale attacks.
What Does This Mean to Your Business?
In the ever-evolving world of cybercrime, user authentication must be a mainstay for businesses to prevent fraud, specifically new account registration fraud). How do you do it? Use the one thing every one of your potential users has right by their side at all times.
It’s All in a Number
As you’ve probably experienced, user verification through email, challenge/knowledge-based questions and CAPTCHA are just no longer sufficient and do not provide adequate data and intelligence about the person behind account activity. To truly prevent fraud, you need to be able to answer these questions about each new user:
- Are they human?
- Are they say who they are?
- Are they risky?
- Are they trustworthy?
- Are they valuable?
When you collect a valid phone number from a user during their account registration, you can collect data about that user based on their unique number. Instantly obtain phone type, telecom carrier information, phone owner contact information, location, disconnected or roaming status, number deactivation timestamp data and other deep phone number data attributes to confirm their identity detect fraud risk.
More Than Just Fraud Prevention
Obtaining phone number data also help determine the optimal message channel for improved SMS and voice deliverability based on phone type, location and status. Whether you’re sending an SMS message with a one-time passcode as part of your phone verification process or communicating with valid users throughout their account lifecycle with alerts, reminders and notifications, this data helps improve delivery and conversion rates to increase engagement and grow your business.
Data intelligence APIs from Telesign are essential for global businesses of all sizes (from SMBs to mid-market and large enterprises), to quickly onboard new users, accurately recognize trusted returning users, and to provide a frictionless and secure online environment. One that helps build a loyal customer base, reduce attrition and increase conversions.
Telesign’s PhoneID delivers risk assessment indicators on the number to help confirm user identity using phone type such as fixed-line, mobile, pre-paid phone, toll-free, non-fixed VoIP, pager, payphone, invalid number and restricted numbers coupled with phone registration location details like city, state, country, time zone and carrier information. This data helps businesses identify anonymous, location-independent telephone numbers and block or flag these types of users since higher rates of fraud are associated with these types of numbers. Telesign’s PhoneID API enables developers to incorporate a frictionless, yet powerful fraud prevention method to your security strategy quickly and easily. Swiftly receive real-time data on phone numbers in the optimal format for faster decision-making on user verification.
MeetMe®, leading social network for meeting new people in the US and the public market leader for social discovery uses Telesign’s PhoneID API to secure its user community and reduce the threat of fraud. Using Telesign, MeetMe has been able to reduce the number of fraudulent registrations, improve their user experience, provide continued monitoring and alerting of suspicious users and deploy event-based verification for suspicious activity. PhoneID is available as part of our free trial. Test it yourself today or contact one of our experts to learn more!
