Fraudsters bank on targeted, high-value attacks during 2020 holiday shopping season
Siftreleased its Q4 2020 Digital Trust & Safety Index: Holiday Fraud and the Shifting State of E-commerce, which revealed that fraudsters are executing larger and more targeted attacks this holiday season. Derived from Sift’s global network of over 34,000 sites and apps, the Index found the average attempted fraudulent purchase value rose to over $700 from October through November 2020, a 70% year-over-year increase during the same period in 2019.
2020 has been a banner year for e-commerce sales, with merchants across Sift’s network enjoying Black Friday-like transaction volumes. In fact, average daily transaction volumes have been equal to 88% of the volume that occurred during Black Friday weekend 2019 – one of the largest shopping weekends of the year. In the wake of the e-commerce boom, fraudsters have changed their tactics to take advantage. Shifting away from the traditional “spray and pray” approach, which includes making dozens or hundreds of lower value transactions with stolen payment information, bad actors are making larger, albeit fewer, attacks. In particular, cybercriminals have focused on e-commerce merchants who are looking to cash in on the surge of online shopping this season, knowing that they will be more likely to get through unabated.