Headlines:
Synthetic ID Fraud Said Rising
The San Diego fraud-protection technology vendor ID Analytics Inc. warns that fabricated identity theft has become more common — and thus more costly — than standard identity theft.
Identity theft typically involves using a victim’s name and other personal data to access bank or credit card accounts, or to borrow money. In the fabricated version, criminals modify a valid Social Security number to create a fictitious identity and then build a credit history they can use to borrow money, apply for a credit card, or otherwise make money.
Perpetrators “like to open up wireless accounts to help them substantiate the identity,” said Mike Cook, a co-founder and the vice president of products for ID Analytics.
Because the identities attached to them do not have as strong a credit background, the per-incident value of synthetic fraud tends to be no more than $2,500, but the large number of frauds being perpetrated has made it more costly than standard identity theft, Mr. Cook said.
According to ID Analytics, 15% of synthetic-identity fraud attempts are successful, compared with 28% of thefts using a real identity, but synthetic fraud accounts for 88.3% of identity-related theft incidents and 73.8% of the money lost.
“There’s a lot more people trying to perpetrate synthetic fraud, and the reason for this is it’s really easy to do,” he said; how-to kits are available on the Internet.
In synthetic theft, criminals typically modify a valid Social Security number — sometimes even their own — just slightly, Mr. Cook said. “Add one to it, and you’re going to have a valid … number for your date of birth.” The validity of numbers can be checked against guides available online.
ID Analytics’ technology was designed to spot some observable patterns in synthetic-identity theft, he said. “They like to do different variations on a name,” including of celebrity names, which makes them easier to remember.
Fraudsters prefer to use female names, Mr. Cook said; he suspects that is because women are perceived to be more trustworthy than men.
S1 Offering Telephone Software
The Atlanta banking technology software vendor S1 Corp. is offering voice software that lets customers perform some banking functions over the phone without using the keypad.
S1’s speech-technology subsidiary, Edify Corp., developed the product, introduced Tuesday. It is available as a standalone item under the name Edify Voice Banking 2.0 or can be integrated into S1’s Enterprise platform under the name S1 Enterprise Voice Banking 2.0.
The new product provides voice self-service to automate user au thentication by asking for information such as mother’s maiden name or date of birth.
It also lets merchants verify funds in a customer account at the time of a purchase and helps customers find nearby branches, S1 said.
S1 said the new application uses industry standards such as VoiceXML — which uses extensible markup language to tag data elements in voice messages — and speech application language tags.
