Account registration fraud detection occurs when cybercriminals take advantage of weaknesses in your site’s sign up and application processes to abuse free trials, create fake user accounts, spam competitors, bypass geo location filters or generate fraudulent affiliate commission. It can cost online firms up to $3 billion per year and is the fastest growing form of fraud today. Fortunately, finding the needle in this fraud haystack is possible with the right tools in your tech stack.

Fraudsters use stolen identity details – either bought on dark web forums and marketplaces or obtained through data breaches and social engineering attacks – to register a multitude of fraudulent accounts across different online services. The goal is to ‘warm up’ their fraudulent activity and then commit more sophisticated transactions later, when they have built up an online profile that appears real.

Beyond the Form: A Comprehensive Guide to Effective Account Registration Fraud Detection

A growing number of software providers offer services that detect this type of account registration fraud by analyzing data gathered from the user’s previous activities online. For example, they can correlate a new phone number or email address with data gathered (or bought) from telecom providers to check whether it has been used before and is legitimate.

A good account registration fraud detection solution should also include an integrated set of real-time analytics that can quickly adapt to the varying attack patterns fraudsters employ and provide a holistic picture of the user. These should include device fingerprinting, IP reputation, SIM and carrier reputation, digital fingerprinting, mobile emulator detection and behavior analysis to ensure that suspicious users are flagged in real-time before they can cause damage.