Rising AI tools leading to more sophisticated fraud than ever

By Puja Sharma

Fraud is growing and becoming more sophisticated

Fincrime prevention experts SEON has released its latest report, which highlights some of the most pressing fraud trends of 2023. The report leverages internal data from the company’s fraud prevention platform to provide businesses and individuals with the insights they need to stay safe over the next twelve months.

The report, paints a worrying picture for both businesses and everyday individuals around online fraud. The publication, entitled ‘Fraud Trends 2023: What They Really Mean for Fraudsters and Your Business’, highlights that fraud is not only on the rise across the internet, but that online fraudsters are now targeting higher amounts of money, and doing so in an increasingly sophisticated manner.

As the report explains, this rise is being underpinned by the advent of powerful AI modules and online fraud tools, which are lowering the barriers to entry around this issue, and enabling fraudsters to conduct more sophisticated fraud attempts in an increasingly cost-effective manner. Similarly, the continued downturn in the broader economy is pushing more people towards committing online fraud, at a time when it can be least afforded.

The good news is that modern fraud prevention solutions such as SEON can mitigate this threat before it grows any further. The company’s platform also utilizes AI technologies, including whitebox and blackbox machine learning modules. Increasingly, SEON’s whitebox and blackbox machine learning modules are relied on to tackle the problem, and have experienced usage increases of over 30% and 46% respectively since September 2022.

Fresh on the back of its exciting acquisition of Complytron, SEON’s new report provides businesses with important insights, which could be crucial to staying safe on the internet over the next twelve months. Alongside documenting some of the key fraud trends it has noticed on its platform, the publication emphasizes the need for further collaboration between fraud prevention experts.

Speaking on the new report, Tamas Kadar, CEO and co-founder of SEON said, “Our new publication highlights the evolving nature of fraud on the internet. Clearly, fraud is growing around the world, and those committing these acts are becoming more brazen and refined in their approach. If we’re not careful, nascent technologies, such as AI could be leveraged by fraudsters even more dangerously in the future.

“We are left with a situation where it is truly best to ‘fight fire with fire’. The use of anti-fraud machine learning solutions has now become imperative in the fight to tackle modern day fraud, and early research indicates that fraud managers are already beginning to rely on these systems to tackle the problems they face. Thankfully, with this approach, companies can greatly reduce the fraud risk to their business, and their customers.”

Key findings: 

• Between October to December 2022, the research shows a 12.9% rise in suspicious user actions, which indicates that fraud is on the rise.
• From September to December 2022, the company found the average amount of money that fraudsters tried to steal per transaction increased by 300%.
• The average fraudster is now using more sophisticated types of tech to hide themselves online
• Artificial Intelligence is being increasingly used by businesses in the fight against online fraud, with SEON’s two machine learning modules seeing a 30% and 46% rise in usage rates since September