As consumers increasingly turn to online shopping for essential and non-essential goods while at home, fraudsters have adapted their technique to use more sophisticated tactics against consumers, banks and merchants.
The situation is tenuous. A recent study from Forter shows fraud attacks increased by 19 percent, globally, from 2018 to 2019 across the online-retail landscape, ranging from return abuse and shipping fraud to account takeovers, identity manipulation and other emerging threats. Observers expect that figure to increase in 2020 based on the last few months alone. Banks and retailers have already reported increases in phishing attacks, and the perception that fraud-prevention teams are not working at full capacity due to the pandemic, makes these organizations particularly vulnerable.