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Identity theft rises as people fall victim to vishing

Monday 1 September 2014 00:36 CET | News

Identity theft has grown to account for nearly 3 quarters of all credit card fraud in 2014, driven by an increase in criminals impersonating others over the phone to obtain their victims’ account details, a recent study shows.

According to a report conducted by fraud prevention service Cifas, identity fraud accounted for 74% of all card fraud in the first six months of 2014, up from 63% in the same period of 2013.

The rise has been driven by “vishing”, where fraudsters phone victims and pretend to be someone else to con them into giving security details.

Lately, criminals have been tricking restaurants into helping them gain access to customers’ bank details.

Vishing or phone phishing is the criminal practice of using social engineering over the telephone system to gain access to private personal and financial information from the public for the purpose of financial reward.


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Keywords: identity theft, vishing, identity fraud, card fraud, online security, digital identity
Categories: Fraud & Financial Crime
Companies:
Countries: World
This article is part of category

Fraud & Financial Crime