Increasingly advanced technology has allowed fraudsters to increase the sophistication and efficacy of their malicious social engineering ploys, new research has found.

Cifas, a UK fraud prevention service, released its 2024 Fraudscape report, detailing the fraud trends seen in 2023 from more than 374,000 cases reported to its database.

In the report, Cifas members reported being increasingly concerned about the potential growth in AI generated fraud, enabling sophisticated phishing scams and synthetic identities.

Identity Fraud 

According to the report, identity fraud accounted for 64% of overall cases in Cifas’ database, with over 237,000 cases reported in 2023.

Organisations were increasingly concerned about social engineering tactics, which have been sharpened with AI, and growing exploitation of cost-of-living pressures.

Cifas found that personal bank accounts were the most targeted, up 12% on the previous year, pointing to concerns that data harvesting techniques to open fraud and abuse accounts, steal identities, and takeover customer accounts are rising.

Facility Takeover

Facility takeover has increased by 13% since 2022, now representing one in ten cases recorded in the database.

Telecommunications were most impacted by this method, account for 41% of these cases. This increase partly reflects a shift in fraudulent methods, with criminals increasingly targeting existing accounts to obtain new products or upgrades.

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Facility Misuse

In a similar vein, over 73,000 cases of misuse of facility were reported in 2023, a 5% increase from 2022. Loan products recorded a notable rise (+82%), followed by asset finance (+45%) and plastic cards (+17%). The overall misuse of facility data covered several industries, highlighting the impact of the cost-of-living pressures and individuals looking to avoid payments or financially fain from stealing assets.

“As our latest data shows, the impact of fraud and financial crime on people, companies and the public sector continues at epidemic levels,” Stephen Dalton, director of intelligence for Cifas said.

“Ongoing economic uncertainty and cost-of-living pressures provide a rich source of opportunity for criminals to exploit people at their most vulnerable. These circumstances may also be the catalyst for some individuals to commit fraud and supplement their income during difficult times.”

Mike Haley, CEO of Cifas, added: “Criminals are finding new and sophisticated ways to target consumers, such as through social media and AI and deepfake technology. We are committed to driving down these cases through the sharing of data and intelligence and building effective defences to prevent fraud.

“To achieve our goal takes a huge multi-sector, collaborative effort. That means having effective cross-government leadership in response to fraud, enhancing victim support, providing critical counter-fraud insight to social media and Big Tech companies, and educating young people about the serious consequences of financial crime.

“We continue to work closely with the fraud prevention industry and multiple sectors to stem the rising tide of fraud and financial crime.”