We report frequently on the subject of loyalty fraud for two main reasons. 1) Because maintaining the integrity of a loyalty program for the sake of your member’s confidence and security is just as important as doing so for bottom line integrity. 2) Because loyalty fraud keeps happening. A lot.
If you were able to catch our latest Loyalty Newswire, we quoted a recent article from Forbes that contained an alarming statistic: “Travel sites are the new target of choice for cybercriminals looking to take over users accounts — called account takeover, or ATO attacks — and steal loyalty points. It’s a big business, with huge sums of money exchanged annually. According to our most recent data looking at tens of billions of daily interactions with websites and mobile apps, ATO attacks are up 65% year-over-year in 2019.”
There are several factors encouraging this trend but beyond the reasons why, it has become clear that because loyalty program operators are the gatekeepers of their member’s data (and thus, their confidence), not proactively addressing this issue is no longer an option. The stakes are just too high. (For reference, at the bottom of this post, you’ll find a list of several other pieces we have published on the topic of loyalty fraud).