What is a Catfishing as Identity Fraud Type
Last month, Lisa Likins, a famous backup singer lost $1 million to a romance scam after her husband’s death. Feeling lonely and depressed after losing her husband she met Donald, a supposedly gold miner in Australia on a dating website and social media. The relationship went on for almost 3 years where the guy managed to jack 1 million US Dollars out of Lisa. She is shocked, confused and heart broken again.
This is just one story out of thousands more where just in 2023 people lost $ 1.14 billion to Catfishing scams as quoted by the Federal Trade Commission. Today, we will try to uncover the truth behind Catfishing and how it can be prevented to protect your digital identities.
What is Catfishing?
Catfishing is a fraudulent practice in which an online persona is created by entirely fake means. A catfisher illegally gains access to the pictures and images of multiple persons or a single person, creates a new identity and then commits fraud online.
Mostly, catfishing is done through social media, online dating websites and other online platforms.
Why is Catfishing the Favorite of Scammers?
Catfishing offers a disguise to the identity thief under which he can steal away money, commit sexual crimes, and still get away with it. It uses AI deep fakes during video calls, face morphing, and face swap technologies to create a false identity. Catfishing scandals are also becoming common with celebrities like the one we discussed in the beginning.
Types of Catfishing in Identity Theft
- Romance Catfishing
Like the scam we discussed earlier, romantic catfishers prey on the heart broken and lonely people searching for love and affection through online dating sites and social media. Romantic catfishers impersonate a wealthy rich guy or a woman with charming personality and will offer themselves to other wealthy victims. Mostly romance continues for months or even years where fraudsters manage to conceal their fake identity. They even engage or marry the victim and once they gain complete confidence, they manage to steal money by getting access to bank accounts, real estate property, credit cards and other scams.
- Social Catfishing
People create fake profiles on different platforms to deceive and manipulate others for defaming and damaging their online presence. The s activity is growing with the growing popularity of social media celebrities on different platforms. Sometimes social media celebrities turn out to be fake using fake identities.
- Professional Catfishing
Some catfishers use professional platforms like recruitment services, consultancy for foreign exchange programs and other employment opportunities that are entirely or partially fake. A fraudster will first run an attractive scheme on the victims through different platforms and websites. Sometimes they use WhatsApp messages to send ads of jobs and study visas with full coverage. Once a victim believes in the fake offer and pays off their demanded money the scam is successful.
- Cyber Bullying
It is one of the most common type of Catfishing in which people use fake identities in bulk to threaten someone from exposing his or her personal life events, capture their data and leak it or even give death threats to victims. Victims who fall prey to their fake threats often give them what they want.
- Child Predation
It is one of the worst kinds of Catfishing scams in which innocent children using social media or smartphones without parental guidance and checks may fall prey to child abusers, exploiters and other such criminals.
Tips to Prevent Catfishing
Understanding catfishing is important to prevent it. Knowing the havocs of Catfishing as a fraudulent activity will help users prevent it before it happens. Follow these tips as a user to prevent Catfishing and protect yourself from vicious frauds and losses.
- Always abstain from visiting unauthentic romantic websites, career platforms that have no credibility. Also, use vigilance and never trust anyone who offers you something that seems unrealistic.
- Never share your credit card information, financial information and other credentials online.
- Use strong passwords, Multi factor authentication and biometric features in your smartphones and laptops to protect your sensitive information.
- Use anti-fraud, anti-malware and other protective software.
- Never click on popup links and use VPN and other masking techniques. Also, never accept unessential cookies from websites that can track your location and other information.
- If you suspect fraudulent activity, report it to the cybercrime cell in your jurisdiction immediately.
How Facial Recognition Software Can Help In Detecting Catfishing?
Facial identity verification solutions act as a fortress against catfishing attacks. As soon as a catfisher tries to login to a protected system, the Facial Recognition system will detect anomalies for deep fakes and perform identity matching to verify the identity. It raises red flags in case a catfisher is detected due to false identity parameters.
Facial Recognition detects facial features, checks the liveness through active and passive liveness detection and then matches the detected identity with different databases of criminals in watchlists, sanction lists and screening lists.
Final Word
Concluding our discussion we highly recommend banks, FIs and other information sensitive organizations to use Identity Solutions like Facia to fortify their businesses against risks like catfishing. This will help them protect their customers and their finances. Facia offers high speed in detecting liveness in under one second and verifies identities with high accuracy. It is trusted by globally leading businesses due to being certified by iBeta Level 2, ISO, and NIST.
