Big rise in fraud attacks against airlines

Fraud attack rates against airlines have risen dramatically over the last year while attacks on the hotel sector have fallen.

According to the latest Fraud Attack Index from e-commerce fraud prevention specialists, Forter, attack rates on airlines have jumped 61%.

Forter said the increase can likely be attributed to the rise in loyalty programme issues and some related data breaches.

These include the British Airways breach that impacted customer information from around 380,000 booking transactions made in the summer of 2018.

“With such immense wealths of data available, fraudsters are focusing their attentions on account-based attacks and other forms of abuse in addition to transactional fraud attacks,” said the report.

Meanwhile, there has been a 10% drop in the number of fraud attacks against the hotel sector.

“Hotels have introduced friction-free experiences in order to provide their customers benefits and the best services. However, as a result of these more seamless experiences, there was a rise in fraud in this area, followed by countered efforts to increase friction in order to deter these fraudsters, thus the small decrease in rates,” the report explained.

Fraud attacks against car rental firms, trains and buses have increased by 38%.

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