This blog is a part of our new series 5 Strategies for Building Resilience to Financial Crimes and Cyber Attacks in 2022. Access to the right data at the right time is the foundation of an efficient payment fraud prevention strategy. At INETCO, we like to say that not all insights are created equal: if you are missing some key pieces of the puzzle you won’t get a clear picture of the threat landscape.

The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has warned the public about a spate of fake messages, sent out as SMS text messages, fraudulently telling recipients that they have been exposed to the Omicron variant of COVID-19. In a tweet, the NHS said that it had seen reports of text messages that claimed to come from the NHS, telling recipients that they had been in close contact with someone who had a confirmed COVID-19 infection, and that they should order a testing kit.

Grooming techniques used in various frauds are getting more common and more elaborate. Fraudsters are coming up with narratives that involve complicated lies and may have different stages, depending on the type of fraud. Often, different actors are brought into the story. These actors also lie to the victim, in order to support the narrative. The purpose of expanding the fraud in this way is to groom the victim to dismiss their doubts or concerns and comply with requests.

Apple says that it protected many millions of users from being defrauded to the tune of nearly $1.5 billion dollars in the last year, by policing its official App Store. According to a newly published report by Apple, over 1.6 million risky and untrustworthy apps and app updates were stopped in their tracks due to the company’s fraud prevention analysis.