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After assaulting financial services more than any other industry with fraud attempts during the first four months of 2021, cyber-criminals have shifted their focus to other industries, in particular travel, leisure and gaming, according to a TransUnion report released Wednesday.
Comparing the second quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of 2021, suspected global digital fraud attempts rose 393% for the gaming industry and 155.9% for the travel and leisure industry. The top types of fraud targeting the gaming and travel and leisure industries were gold farming and credit card fraud, respectively. The financial services industry saw an 18.8% lift in suspected digital fraud attempts globally during the same time period – a dramatic drop from the 149% increase reported by TransUnion when comparing the first four months of 2020 to the first four months of 2021.
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In the U.S. specifically, suspected digital fraud attempts jumped 261.9% for gaming, 136.6% for travel and leisure, and 38.3% for financial services.
"It is quite common for fraudsters to shift their focus every few months from one industry to another," Shai Cohen, SVP of Global Fraud Solutions at TransUnion, stated. "Fraudsters tend to seek out industries that may be seeing an immense growth in transactions. This quarter, as countries began to open up more from their COVID-19 lockdowns, and travel and other leisure activities became more mainstream, fraudsters clearly made this industry a top target. The immense growth in gaming fraud also can be attributed to the shifts in focus of fraudsters as this growing market becomes a larger target."
Across all industries, the rate of suspected global digital fraud attempts went up by 16.5% when comparing Q2 2020 to Q2 2021; in the U.S. only, TransUnion reported a 17.1% increase.
These findings were based on intelligence from billions of transactions and more than 40,000 websites and apps contained in the company's flagship identity proofing, risk-based authentication and fraud analytics solution suite, TransUnion TruValidate.
TransUnion also released results from its June 2021 Consumer Pulse study, revealing that 36% of global survey respondents said they were targeted by fraudsters in COVID-19-related digital schemes; nearly four in 10 (39%) U.S. respondents said they were targeted. The top type of COVID-19-related fraud schemes involved phishing for both global survey respondents (33%) and U.S. respondents (35%), followed by stolen credit card or fraudulent charges for both the worldwide (24%) and U.S. (31%) respondent groups.
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Natasha Chilingerian
Natasha Chilingerian has been immersed in the credit union industry for over a decade. She first joined CU Times in 2011 as a freelance writer, and following a two-year hiatus from 2013-2015, during which time she served as a communications specialist for Xceed Financial Credit Union (now Kinecta Federal Credit Union), she re-joined the CU Times team full-time as managing editor. She was promoted to executive editor in 2019. In the earlier days of her career, Chilingerian focused on news and lifestyle journalism, serving as a writer and editor for numerous regional publications in Oregon, Louisiana, South Carolina and the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition, she holds experience in marketing copywriting for companies in the finance and technology space. At CU Times, she covers People and Community news, cybersecurity, fintech partnerships, marketing, workplace culture, leadership, DEI, branch strategies, digital banking and more. She currently works remotely and splits her time between Southern California and Portland, Ore.
