SEON is advising online businesses to batten down the hatches, as online crooks prepare to make one final fraudulent push before the holidays. Leveraging its own data and customer insights, the company believes more fraud attempts will be made during the week of 12th December than in any other week in 2022.

According to SEON:

• The percentage of average declined transactions was higher during the week of 12th December than any other week in 2021 due to elevated fraud risk.
• There was a 255% increase in bot usage on fraud attempts during this period in 2021, which should be expected again in 2022.
• Unlike Black Friday weekend, where eCommerce merchants are mainly targeted, fraudsters are more likely to attack iGaming providers in the run-up to Christmas as they prioritize cash over products.

In the final run-up to the holidays, fraud prevention company, SEON is warning all online businesses to brace for one last surge in fraud attempts. That’s because last year, during the week of 12th December, the company’s system declined more than 100,000 transactions per day for merchants in the eCommerce, iGaming, and online loan sectors. Now, SEON is expecting even bigger numbers in 2022, as fraudsters look to take advantage ahead of the big day.

However, unlike Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which see particularly big increases in fraud attempts targeted at eCommerce merchants, the run-up to Christmas is dominated by online crooks attempting to defraud iGaming providers. Clearly, fraudsters don’t have much faith in their local post service to deliver their stolen goods in time for Christmas and would rather use their nefarious methods to generate cash and bonuses instead.

This change in target seems to also influence the methods that fraudsters use during this period. Whereas during Black Friday weekend, when online crooks look to utilize fake accounts, the week of 12th December sees SEON’s system flagging a big rise in suspicious web browser profiles. In practice, this means user accounts with suspiciously old browser versions or ones that demonstrate behaviours associated with online bots.

Speaking on the trends, Tamas Kadar, CEO and Co-Founder of SEON commented: “The run-up to the holidays is busy for everyone, including online fraudsters. Any business expecting a holiday from this threat will be disappointed by our research, which clearly highlights the week of 12th December as being the busiest single week for online fraud attempts of the year. Thankfully, solutions like ours can help in the fight back against this challenge.”

Recently, SEON, which has just launched a ‘forever free’ version of its online fraud prevention solution, warned online businesses about the fraud risks associated with Cyber Monday. The company’s prediction has been supported by recent reports from TransUnion and BigCommerce, which have highlighted that a significant increase in online fraud attempts did occur during this period.