In the latest report compiled by consulting firm Javelin a new kind of hacking trend has come to light. The report says that in 2017 hackers obtained a greater percentage of social security numbers than credit card numbers despite efforts to tame rampant identity fraud by the government of United States.
It is said that the number of people affected by the fraud in the United States rose to 16.7 million, as cyber crooks thrived in swiping another 1.3 million victims and siphoned over $16.8 billion from accounts.
Javelin Networks, the Texas-based firm has issued a warning that identity theft is happening more online and less in physical communal spaces. The researchers from the said firm claim that hackers managed to compromise 35% of Social security Numbers surpassing the regular 30% of credit card numbers.
The firm claims that the percentage of US consumers falling prey to online frauds jumped to 6.64 million, a 1 million rise when compared to 2016. Security experts feel that the increase was witnessed due to the growth in both existing non-card fraud and account takeovers.
Note 1- Non-card Fraud is a variant of credit card scam where the customer does not physically present the card to the merchant during the fraudulent transaction. Means hackers somehow obtain the credit card details and use them for fraudulent transactions.
Note 2- Account takeovers happen when a hacker can access funds of an account holder without his/her knowledge.
Javelin study confirmed that account takeover frauds resulted in $5.1 billion loss, up by 120% from 2016.
The report clearly mentions that customers are now interested in organizations which take the responsibility to keep their financial assets secure and safe from prying eyes. And so financial firms which are offering 2-factor authentication and transaction alerts are now making good business to those which are not offering such services.
Note 3- Javelin offers a world’s first intrusion containment platform for domain networks. It eliminates breaches by protecting Active Directory, Domain Controllers, Domain Identities, Domain Credentials, and all Domain Resources from hackers.
