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Detecting Synthetic Identities: The Best Offense is a Good Defense

Published: December 5, 2019 by Guest Contributor

Sometimes, the best offense is a good defense. That’s certainly true when it comes to detecting synthetic identities, which by their very nature become harder to find the longer they’ve been around.

To launch an offense against synthetic identity fraud, you need to defend yourself from it at the top of your new customer funnel. Once fraudsters embed their fake identity into your portfolio, they become nearly impossible to detect.

The Challenge

Synthetic identity fraud is the fastest-growing type of financial crime in the United States. The cost to businesses is hard to determine because it’s not always caught or reported, but the amounts are staggering. According to the Aite Group, it was estimated to total at least $820 million in 2017 and grow to $1.2 billion by 2020.

This type of theft begins when individual thieves and large-scale crime rings use a combination of compromised personal information—like unused social security numbers—and fabricated data to stitch together increasingly sophisticated personas.

These well-crafted synthetic identities are hard to differentiate from the real deal. They often pass Know Your Customer, Customer Identification Program and other onboarding checks both in person and online. This puts the burden on you to develop new defense strategies or pay the price.

Additionally, increasing pressure to grow deposits and expand loan portfolios may coincide with the relaxation of new customer criteria, allowing even more fraudsters to slip through the cracks.

Because fraudsters nurture their fake identities by making payments on time and don’t exhibit other risk factors as their credit limits increase, detecting synthetic identities becomes nearly impossible, as does defending against them.

How This Impacts Your Bottom Line

Synthetic identity theft is sometimes viewed as a victimless crime, since no single individual has their entire identity compromised. But it’s not victimless. When undetected fraudsters finally max out their credit lines before vanishing, the financial institution is usually stuck footing the bill.

These same fraudsters know that many financial institutions will automatically settle fraud claims below a specific threshold. They capitalize on this by disputing transactions just below it, keeping the goods or services they purchased without paying.

Fraudsters can double-dip on a single identity bust-out by claiming identity theft to have charges removed or by using fake checks to pay off balances before maxing out the credit again and defaulting.

The cost of not detecting synthetic identities doesn’t stop at the initial loss. It flows outward like ripples, including:

  • Damage to your reputation as a trusted organization
  • Fines for noncompliance with Know Your Customer
  • Account opening and maintenance costs that are not recouped as they would be with a legitimate customer
  • Mistakenly classifying fraudsters as bad debt write offs
  • Monetary loss from fraudsters’ unpaid balances
  • Rising collections costs as you try to track down people who don’t exist
  • Less advantageous rates for customers in the future as your margins grow thinner

These losses add up, continuing to impact your bottom line over and over again.

Defensive Strategies

So what can you do?

Tools like eCBSV that will assist with detecting synthetic identities are coming but they’re not here yet. And once they’re in place, they won’t be an instant fix.

Implementing an overly cautious fraud detection strategy on your own will cause a high number of false positives, meaning you miss out on revenue from genuine customers.

Your best defense requires finding a partner to help you implement a multi-layered fraud detection strategy throughout the customer lifecycle. Detecting synthetic identities entails looking at more than a single factor (like length of credit history). You need to aggregate multiple data sets and connect multiple customer characteristics to effectively defend against synthetic identity fraud.

Experian’s synthetic identity prevention tools include Synthetic Identity High Risk Score to incorporate the history and past relationships between individuals to detect anomalies. Additionally, our digital device intelligence tools perform link analyses to connect identities that seem otherwise separate. We help our partners pinpoint false identities not associated with an actual person and decrease charge offs, protecting your bottom line and helping you let good customers in while keeping false personas out.

Find out how to get your synthetic identity defense in place today.

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Fake IDs have been around for decades, but today’s fraudsters aren’t just printing counterfeit driver’s licenses — they’re using artificial intelligence (AI) to create synthetic identities. These AI fake IDs bypass traditional security checks, making it harder for businesses to distinguish real customers from fraudsters. To stay ahead, organizations need to rethink their fraud prevention solutions and invest in advanced tools to stop bad actors before they gain access. The growing threat of AI Fake IDs   AI-generated IDs aren’t just a problem for bars and nightclubs; they’re a serious risk across industries. Fraudsters use AI to generate high-quality fake government-issued IDs, complete with real-looking holograms and barcodes. These fake IDs can be used to commit financial fraud, apply for loans or even launder money. Emerging services like OnlyFake are making AI-generated fake IDs accessible. For $15, users can generate realistic government-issued IDs that can bypass identity verification checks, including Know Your Customer (KYC) processes on major cryptocurrency exchanges.1 Who’s at risk? AI-driven identity fraud is a growing problem for: Financial services – Fraudsters use AI-generated IDs to open bank accounts, apply for loans and commit credit card fraud. Without strong identity verification and fraud detection, banks may unknowingly approve fraudulent applications. E-commerce and retail – Fake accounts enable fraudsters to make unauthorized purchases, exploit return policies and commit chargeback fraud. Businesses relying on outdated identity verification methods are especially vulnerable. Healthcare and insurance – Fraudsters use fake identities to access medical services, prescription drugs or insurance benefits, creating both financial and compliance risks. The rise of synthetic ID fraud Fraudsters don’t just stop at creating fake IDs — they take it a step further by combining real and fake information to create entirely new identities. This is known as synthetic ID fraud, a rapidly growing threat in the digital economy. Unlike traditional identity theft, where a criminal steals an existing person’s information, synthetic identity fraud involves fabricating an identity that has no real-world counterpart. This makes detection more difficult, as there’s no individual to report fraudulent activity. Without strong synthetic fraud detection measures in place, businesses may unknowingly approve loans, credit cards or accounts for these fake identities. The deepfake threat AI-powered fraud isn’t limited to generating fake physical IDs. Fraudsters are also using deepfake technology to impersonate real people. With advanced AI, they can create hyper-realistic photos, videos and voice recordings to bypass facial recognition and biometric verification. For businesses relying on ID document scans and video verification, this can be a serious problem. Fraudsters can: Use AI-generated faces to create entirely fake identities that appear legitimate Manipulate real customer videos to pass live identity checks Clone voices to trick call centers and voice authentication systems As deepfake technology improves, businesses need fraud prevention solutions that go beyond traditional ID verification. AI-powered synthetic fraud detection can analyze biometric inconsistencies, detect signs of image manipulation and flag suspicious behavior. How businesses can combat AI fake ID fraud Stopping AI-powered fraud requires more than just traditional ID checks. Businesses need to upgrade their fraud defenses with identity solutions that use multidimensional data, advanced analytics and machine learning to verify identities in real time. Here’s how: Leverage AI-powered fraud detection – The same AI capabilities that fraudsters use can also be used against them. Identity verification systems powered by machine learning can detect anomalies in ID documents, biometrics and user behavior. Implement robust KYC solutions – KYC protocols help businesses verify customer identities more accurately. Enhanced KYC solutions use multi-layered authentication methods to detect fraudulent applications before they’re approved. Adopt real-time fraud prevention solutions – Businesses should invest in fraud prevention solutions that analyze transaction patterns and device intelligence to flag suspicious activity. Strengthen synthetic identity fraud detection – Detecting synthetic identities requires a combination of behavioral analytics, document verification and cross-industry data matching. Advanced synthetic fraud detection tools can help businesses identify and block synthetic identities. Stay ahead of AI fraudsters AI-generated fake IDs and synthetic identities are evolving, but businesses don’t have to be caught off guard. By investing in identity solutions that leverage AI-driven fraud detection, businesses can protect themselves from costly fraud schemes while ensuring a seamless experience for legitimate customers. At Experian, we combine cutting-edge fraud prevention, KYC and authentication solutions to help businesses detect and prevent AI-generated fake ID and synthetic ID fraud before they cause damage. Our advanced analytics, machine learning models and real-time data insights provide the intelligence businesses need to outsmart fraudsters. Learn more *This article includes content created by an AI language model and is intended to provide general information. 1 https://www.404media.co/inside-the-underground-site-where-ai-neural-networks-churns-out-fake-ids-onlyfake/

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