Chris Ryan, Senior Fraud Business Consultant, talks to Nick Zulovich at the Auto Remarketing podcast about the new ways we are seeing fraud surface as the global pandemic evolves.
“The pattern of activity that we’re seeing that has really attracted my interest is this notion of human farming. A human farm is a pool of paid labor who research information on potential fraud victims using data that’s been stolen through data breaches and using information that people publish through social media and other outlets. The objective of a human farmer is to be able to assemble a detailed profile of a potential fraud victim so that the perpetrator can better impersonate them and navigate around potential security measures and other obstacles that would normally be in the way.”
Chris Ryan, Senior Fraud Business Consultant
Why the opportunity for human farming?
- People are out of work so there’s a recruitment opportunity for those in need of an income.
- There is a flood of people into the online space who might not ordinarily engage digitally. This demographic may not be tech-savvy and maybe more susceptible to fraud methods such as phishing.
- Resources that typically screen for fraud are suffering due to office closures.
- The combination of high tech fraud to find potential victims plus skilled human intelligence makes these methods highly effective.
New trend amidst new circumstances – the rise of synthetic ID
Remote transactions combined with the high-value nature of the auto industry makes it a very attractive prospect to fraudsters. Even though purchases are down, the fraudsters are still active. Synthetic identity fraud, in particular, continues to be attractive because the identities are not real and therefore not suffering from the same downturn as genuine profiles.
Listen to the full podcast here.
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