How AI Fights Fraud During the Holidays Posted on : Dec 18 - 2019

Christmas is just over a week away, which means the holiday shopping season is in full swing. Consumers are spending billions of dollars per day on gifts in anticipation of the big day. But the fraudsters are also out in force to steal a piece of the action. Luckily, AI and machine learning are getting better at identifying these grinches before they ruin things for the rest of us.

The math is pretty simple: The bigger the holiday buying season, the bigger the pay day for fraudsters. Deloitte predicts that online sales during this holiday season will increase between 14% and 18% compared to the previous year, accounting for $149 billion in sales. Overall holiday spending is expected to top $1.1 trillion, it said.

According to data from the Forter Fraud Attack Index, the overall dollar volume of fraud rose 12% between the second quarter of 2018 and the second quarter of 2019, with activity soaring once holiday shopping began. “Since the holiday season represents about 20% of annual retail sales, expect an increase in attempted fraud,” Forter writes in its holiday white paper.

In the UK, 94% of retailers say they’ve witnessed a rise in fourth-quarter fraud since 2016, according to GBG, with 31% saying that the increase is “significant.” The uptick in activity during the “gold quarter” provides cover for fraudsters to blend in with the holiday traffic.

That provides plenty of room for fraudsters to do their dastardly deeds, according to the folks at Terbium Labs, a provider of data security solutions. “Criminals rely on consumers to stay distracted during the holiday season, and less likely to notice unauthorized transactions on their accounts during the bustle of holiday parties and gift-giving,” Terbium writes in its November 2019 report, “How Fraud Stole Christmas.” View More