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Fraud & Identity Today Week in Review: TCPA Compliance, Account Takeover & Identity Fraud

By Alicia Young Web Editor

Welcome to the week in review, where we take a look at all the top stories making headlines in the mobile fraud space this week.

The week started off with a special guest piece from Patrick Wilcox, product manager at iconectiv (News - Alert). In his article, Wilcox discusses the importance of making sure that business communications go to the right person. It’s easy for businesses to send texts to a list of users that hasn’t been updated in years, but with recycled numbers and phone number changes a common occurrence, people often get texts they didn’t sign up for. This can become extremely frustrating, which is why the TCPA was passed in 1991 to protect consumers from nuisance calls. Companies that fail to comply with TCPA rules can face some serious consequences. Find out more HERE.

Meanwhile, I covered another growing issue in the fraud space: Mobile Account Takeover. Account Takeover is when a fraudster uses a victim’s identity to access the victim’s account information. It’s estimated that Account Takeover costs $2.16 billion in annual losses and accounts for about 5 percent of overall global communications fraud. Unfortunately, fraudsters can steal the necessary information in a matter of minutes, before the victim has any idea there’s even a problem. Find out why this problem is growing and how fraudsters can steal your information HERE.

Since it’s so easy for fraudsters to steal information, it’s no wonder that the number of identity fraud cases is going up. In the U.K., identity fraud has reached epic proportions, with a record breaking number of cases occurring last year. A new report from CIfas, a data sharing and prevention agency, revealed 172,919 cases of identity fraud were recorded in 2016, accounting for more than half of all fraud in the U.K. TMC’s (News - Alert) Laura Stotler has everything you need to know HERE.

Clearly, fraud is an issue that needs to be top of mind for everyone—consumers, banks, service providers, etc. Three UK is currently facing problems after a data breach that left “a small number of customers who may have been able to view the mobile account details of other three users using My3.” This breach follows just months after another in November, when the data of six million customers was stolen. Although Three UK strengthened its security after the first breach, the second still occurred, and opened users up to identity fraud. This just goes to show that security really does need to be a top priority for service providers—there’s no such thing as going too far to protect consumer privacy. Everything you need to know is HERE.

That’s all for this week. Come back next week to read all the latest fraud-related news.