By Namrata Jolly, General Manager for Asia Pacific, Callsign
Around the globe, we are seeing the rise of a new type of fraud, that of authorized fraud. Unauthorized fraud is easy to spot, account take over and third party fraud is rife, with frequent news coverage about fraudsters utilising OTPs to help them successfully execute their plans
But authorized fraud is quite different and looks like a legitimate transaction made by the genuine user, but is, in reality, someone who has been tricked or coerced into action by social engineering tactics deployed by fraudsters.
As an indication of how bad the problem is in the Asia Pacific, Malaysians reported 51,631 online fraud cases. In the Philippines, Globe Telecom blocked over 30 million suspected spam or scam SMS messages in just a two week period; and phone scams in Hong Kong shot up 60% in the first seven months of 2022.
Authorized fraud relies on impersonation, a legitimate sounding request for money, payment for fake goods or services, unpaid tax, or even that the victims bank account has been compromised and they need to move their money to a safe account. By using social engineering techniques designed to cause victims stress and panic, the fraudster strikes.
Forrester, a global research company, says that in the last 18 months authorized fraud or authorized push payments (APP) were considered a major problem 66%by financial services and consumer banking organizations in the Asia Pacific region. These…
