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Fraud Trends and Tips Since Coronavirus Pandemic

Fraudsters are looking to take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic. PULSE Fraud Operations analyzed emerging fraud trends, as well as changes in ongoing patterns, observed since the COVID-19 outbreak. 
 
The trends are listed below, along with suggested actions issuers can take to help protect cardholders.
 
Coronavirus Fraud Trends
  • Skimming from common, unattended points of compromise such as ATMs and gas pumps:
    • Consider monitoring your ATMs for foreign devices regularly.
    • Customer education is one of the best defenses against gas-pump skimming. 
  • Social engineering via email or fake websites:
    • Fraudsters may use pandemic concerns to persuade people to reveal sensitive information.
    • Educate customers to be vigilant about unsolicited emails, and to use only trusted websites with a good reputation. 
  • Work-from-home scams:
    • With increases in unemployment, it has been reported that “work-from-home” job scams are increasing on many websites. Issuers should educate not only account holders about these scams, but frontline staff as well.
  • To date, PULSE has observed no unusual uptick in card-not-present (CNP) fraud. Our team is constantly monitoring for any unusual activity spikes and emerging fraud trends in the CNP segment. 
 
PULSE clients can review fraud alerts generated by the DebitProtect® Network Alerting rules by registering for DebitProtect at www.pulsenetwork.com/pulse/register.html