Tele-Crooks Prefer Banks to Insurers: Pindrop

Individual con artists, organized crime rings and other wrongdoers may have put more effort into defrauding credit unions, banks and retailers in 2020 than into defrauding insurers.

Pindrop — an Atlanta-based company that sells voice-recognition-based security systems —  says fraudulent calls accounted for just 1 in 7,143 calls to contact center agents in 2020.

Here’s what the 2020 ratios of fraudulent calls to all calls looked like for four other types of call center agents Pindrop analyzed:

• Securities Brokers: 1 in 6,080
• Credit Unions: 1 in 1,611
• Banks: 1 in 961
• Retailers: 1 in 142

Pindrop says that, overall, the average ratio of fraudulent calls to all calls is only about 1 in 1,074 for life-human agents

The average ratio is about 1 in 40, or 25 times higher, for companies’ interactive voice response systems.

Pindrop also presented a hypothetical “account takeover checklist” listing the kinds of information that can help cyberthieves take over consumers’ accounts. This includes obvious, items, such as account numbers, full names and Social Security numbers.

The list also includes information crooks can use to get past human-managed identity screening efforts, such as the year an account holder graduated from high school and the name of the high school’s mascot.

(Image: 13_Phunkod/Shutterstock)