Detecting fraudulent accounts is critical to protecting businesses and their customers from criminals who want to steal identities, money or other assets. Fraudulent accounts can be found in many places, from an attacker gaining access to a corporate network to hacking into someone’s email account and stealing personal information.

There are a variety of ways to detect detect fraudulent accounts, from specialized software that can recognize suspicious patterns in passwords and activity on social media to an alert system that can flag unusual or uncharacteristic behavior. Some fraud detection software is even able to identify font variations on documents that might indicate fraudulent modification.

While some types of fraud are easier to prevent than others, detecting fraudulent accounts is an ongoing challenge for cybersecurity teams, especially as criminals find new ways to circumvent security systems and steal data and other assets. One major challenge is the growth of account creation fraud, which involves hackers using stolen real-life identity credentials to create fake user accounts.

Spotting the Red Flags: Techniques for Detecting Fraudulent User Accounts

To combat this growing problem, cybersecurity experts are looking at different ways to verify users’ identities, from incorporating AI into business processes to creating new, more secure forms of user authentication. But it’s important to understand that, as fast as these technologies are developed, fraudsters will be working on ways to circumvent them.

For example, in the past, companies used to rely on rule-based fraud detection algorithms that were written by human analysts. These rules were often based on specific data points such as location, identity, payment mode or frequency and other business-specific parameters. These algorithms were effective, but they required significant human effort and tended to produce false positives.