There was an 85% year-on-year increase in attacks targeting logins or account creation in 2021 as bot-driven fraud attempts soared, according to Arkose Labs.
The fraud prevention firm analyzed over 150 billion transaction requests across 254 countries across the 12-month period to compile its latest report, The 2022 State of Fraud and Account Security.
It found one in four newly created accounts were fake, one in five logins was an account takeover (ATO) attempt and a fifth (21%) of all traffic was linked to fraud.
ATOs are commonly used to steal personal and financial data or launch phishing attacks. Fraudulent new accounts could be used for “inventory hoarding, content scraping and sending spam and phishing messages,” according to Arkose Labs CEO and founder, Kevin Gosschalk.