Account Takeover Fraud: Prevention and Protection
Learn everything you need to know about account takeover fraud, how it impacts businesses, and how companies can protect themselves.
Learn everything you need to know about account takeover fraud, how it impacts businesses, and how companies can protect themselves.
Account takeover has been an imposing threat for many years. As users pay less attention to protecting their personal information and passwords, fraudsters are constantly improving their hacking techniques, stealing accounts faster and cheaper.
According to Sumsubâs 2023 Identity Fraud Report, account takeover is among the five most popular types of identity fraud. We expect that the prevalence of account takeovers will continue to increase, which means that companies need to implement more robust countermeasures.
We at Sumsub have prepared a guide explaining what account takeover is, how it affects businesses, and what companies can do to prevent it.
Account takeover, also known as ATO, is when fraudsters gain unauthorized access to someoneâs online account, usually by stealing their personal information. Fraudsters employ various methods to gain the necessary personal information, including phishing and malware attacks. Once these accounts are taken over, fraudsters can profit off of themâand potentially even breach other accounts belonging to the same victim.Â
Fraudsters can also create entirely new accounts from scratch, which you can learn about here.
According to 2023 Sumsubâs Fraud Report, account takeovers are among the top-5 of the most popular identity fraud types. Despite efforts to bolster security measures, account takeovers have steadily grown. Sumsubâs internal statistics show that global account takeover incidents increased by 155% in 2023.
The enduring threat of account takeovers can be attributed to several key factors:
These factors allow fraudsters to easily trick users into sharing sensitive data. This is usually done through one of the schemes listed below.
Account takeover affects types of businesses, including car sharing insurance, banks, crypto platforms, and more.
However, some organizations are more at-risk than others:
Suggested read: Know Your Enemy: An Interactive Guide to Online Gaming Fraud
Companies should monitor user behavior and look out for unusual or suspicious patterns, such as:
Itâs essential for a company to implement a variety of automated solutions that can prevent and detect account takeover cases, including:
To prevent account takeover, companies need to deploy advanced anti-fraud systems. These systems encompass strong authentication, fraud detection, security education, continuous account monitoring, risk-based authentication, and account recovery and remediation processes.
Real-time monitoring allows companies to detect irregular patterns or behaviors that may signal a potential account takeover. Examples of this can be a login attempt from unfamiliar locations or sudden changes in account settings.
Sumsub also uses AI-driven algorithms to analyze anomalies. Additionally, our monitoring systems keep track of important information, such as device type, telemetry, operating systems, browser versions, client-side malware, VPN, geolocation data, IP address, and even hardware configurations. If suspicions arise, the system will send an immediate alert for further investigation.
Our AI-driven solution continuously adapts to new attack vectors and ensures early detection of potential threats. Plus, companies can customize their rules and flows with a no-code builderâgiving them tailored scenarios that cater to specific risk policies and business requirements.
Learn more about Sumsubâs account takeover detection and prevention solution here.
ATO stands for account takeover. Itâs the process of stealing sensitive personal information and using it to gain access to oneâs online account.
Account takeover, also known as ATO, is when fraudsters gain unauthorized access to someoneâs online account, usually by stealing their personal information. Fraudsters employ various methods to gain the necessary personal information, including phishing and malware attacks. Once these accounts are taken over, fraudsters can profit off of themâand potentially even breach other accounts belonging to the same victim.
Identity theft refers to a wider category of fraud that involves stealing personal data. Nevertheless, account takeover can certainly occur as a result of identity theft, since stolen personal information can be used to takeover an account.
Companies risk running into financial and reputational losses in case account takeovers occur on their platform. The risks include, but are not limited to: