Johannesburg - South Africans were eager to forget 2020 and had high expectations for 2021. Unfortunately, these have not been met.
The Southern African Fraud Prevention Service (SAFPS) points out that the fraud risk landscape is growing by the day.
“We are really reaching a critical point when it comes to the economy and the extreme measures that criminals will use to perpetrate fraud. The 2020 statistics that were collected by the SAFPS indicate that there are significant increases in key areas and that there is a long road ahead to address this challenge,” said Manie van Schalkwyk, chief executive of SAFPS.
He said fraud in the Eastern Cape increased by 161% and by 120% in Gauteng. “There were increases in every province, with the exception of Limpopo,” he said.
The SAFPS reports that an area which saw a major increase was fraud listings which increased by 62%. In addition, victim listings were up by 54%.
“The year 2020 was a year of major disruption as many employees were told that they had to work from home. The problem with this is that employees are now conducting their work, and in some cases sending sensitive information across servers that do not have the same level of security as the servers at their normal place of business. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is driven by data and cybercriminals are conducting targeted attacks on servers to steal valuable data and use it to commit fraud.
“We saw this in the Experian and Absa data breaches last year. The fact that there is a significant increase in victim listings could be because of an increase in data breaches,” said Van Schalkwyk.
Perhaps the most concerning statistic coming out of the recent SAFPS report is that impersonation fraud increased by 337%.
“This is extremely concerning. Impersonation fraud is the act of a criminal impersonating another person by stealing their identity and then opening accounts in their name. The fraudster has details of the victim and try to take over (their) account.
“The credit provider will ask the questions normally asked to the account holder. Because of data breaches, this information is available to the fraudster making it easier to take over the account.
“They then take over the account and leave the victim with massive amounts of debt that they never took out in the first place,” said Van Schalkwyk, who added that technology had also improved significantly, making it very easy to make a fake application look very legitimate.
It is not all bad news though. The SAFPS reports that industry savings by companies that make use of the SAFPS database increased by 86% to R4.4 billion.
One of the most important services, and the core of SAFPS’ service offering, is protective registration.
This is a free service protecting individuals against identity fraud. Consumers apply for this service and the SAFPS alerts its members to take additional care when dealing with that individual’s details.
Protective registration provides an added layer of protection and peace of mind regardless of whether the identity of the applicant has been compromised.
Through fraud victim registration, the SAFPS will assist applicants in preventing fraud that is a result of identity theft and impersonation.
This will protect applicants from associated financial implications.
The SAFPS will issue applicants with a victim of impersonation letter which they can share with future credit providers to assist in any verification processes.
The Star