Report Concludes Nearly Half of All Cyberattacks Involve Brand Impersonation

Anti-fraud product provider Outseer has released its latest findings on brand abuse, and it doesn’t make pleasant reading for online banking and eCommerce.

According to the latest quarterly analysis from Outseer’s FraudAction team, brand impersonation scams continue to exploit the sharp rise in digital banking and eCommerce during the pandemic.

While fraudsters have long masqueraded as easily recognisable firms such as Chase, Wells Fargo, Amazon and Microsoft in attacks targeting consumers and businesses, these types of attacks are no longer limited to the Fortune 500 list of companies. As captured in Outseer’s Q3 2021 Fraud & Payments Report ¹, brand abuse is the fastest growing attack method for transaction fraud for the third quarter in a row as bad actors accelerate the tactics they use to impersonate brands both large and small.

The report features the company’s analysis of more than 49,000 payments fraud attacks from April through June 2021. And it documents a troubling rise in the use of email and text phishing scams, fraudulent social media pages, and rogue mobile apps to impersonate trusted brands in order to harvest login and payment credentials from victims.