Coordinated fraud attacks on airlines, like in other industries, are on the rise. It’s essential to understand what the fraudsters are doing and how, in order to put a stop to it, explains Pete Morehead.
As 76% of travel sector merchants report an increase in fraud, according to Ravelin’s Global Fraud Trends 2024, fighting fraud is clearly a top priority for airlines with £billions in losses and their reputations at stake. Airlines are an attractive target for fraudsters, with customer accounts providing a source of personal and financial data, and access to valuable loyalty points.
Attacks are typically coordinated across all customer channels, carried out by organised groups targeting multiple organisations and sectors, looking for vulnerabilities. And in our experience, contact centres are increasingly becoming a critical entry point. Our recent research backs this – high numbers of travel industry respondents reported fraudulent activity in contact centres both in the interactive voice response (IVR) system (66%) and with call agents (55%).
So what are the fraudsters up to? In conversation with airline fraud teams, we regularly hear about fraudsters using stolen credit cards to pay for flights, often booking 24 hours before departure. Loyalty points fraud is another issue – unauthorised use of points to buy flights, or fraudsters adding their frequent flier number to other people’s bookings, for example.
Fake travel agencies selling marked up tickets – a little like the ghost-broking issues we see our insurance clients face – also pose issues. The challenge is to find ways to spot this happening.
And our work across a range of consumer-facing sectors shows that contact centres are often at the centre of this activity, the human element making them an easier target. Spotting suspicious activity here is tricky – especially if individual calls seem legitimate and the caller appears to have all the correct information.
But if you zoom out and analyse calls and caller patterns collectively, you gain new perspectives on fraudster activity. Here are some of things you might see:
- Calls from the same number are calling about multiple customer accounts
- Multiple frequent calls from the same number to the contact centre IVR
- Calls from withheld phone numbers in an attempt to avoid detection
- Numbers that have been denylisted by contact centres from other sectors, such as banks or insurance companies
With the right technology in place, it is possible to spot these patterns and flag callers displaying these traits. And when you do, you’re likely to discover the same numbers targeting your IVR over and over, attempting to gather customer account information.
You may also see numbers calling the contact centre that have been flagged by a bank or insurance company as owned by fraudsters. And they may be calling to make changes to several of your customer accounts.
These are all live signs of fraudulent activity taking place in the contact centre. And spotting them is key to putting a stop to it.
For more information on how Smartnumbers Protect works for airlines, download the airlines solution overview.
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