EconomyFinancialIdentity fraud: 6 tips that Mexicans should follow so...

Identity fraud: 6 tips that Mexicans should follow so they don't get robbed when buying online

Technological advances came with two news: one good and one bad. The good news is that they have made certain day-to-day processes easier. The bad: they bring with them new risks and the possibility of being victims of crimes such as identity fraud and card cloning, among others.

To avoid this situation, beyond stigmatizing the use of technology to make the processes we carry out more efficient, we just need to apply a few recommendations to reduce this risk as much as possible.

Fraud due to identity theft or identity theft are the crimes that have generated the most complaints against banks. From January to March of this year, 1.3 million files were filed against banks operating in Mexico,” Carlos Chavarría, CEO of Na-At Technologies, a multi-biometric platform in the cloud to validate identity, told Expansión.

The number of identity theft complaints soared 378% between the first quarter of this year, compared to the same period in 2021, according to Condusef data, he added.

With the pandemic, Mexico and the world were forced to turn to the digital world to pay for products and services, which led to a growth in electronic commerce (e-commerce).

This situation brought the opportunity to develop technology and security systems to generate two-way protection; on the side of businesses and service providers and customers and users, said Saraí Baeza, Vice President of Product at Conekta, a payment platform that has processed around 140 million transactions.

“Technology plays a super important role in how you can identify these fraud attempts to do double protection,” he said.

security recommendations

There are very simple actions that can be carried out to avoid being victims of a cyber crime.

From not buying using public networks, reading what the “windows” that open on Internet sites say, verifying that you are browsing a secure site -which has the letter s after the http- and buying directly on the official pages of the brands or stores.

  • Never leave the voting card (INE) in the places where they ask for identification and registration, but the driver’s license or some other card with which they cannot do any paperwork in banks.
  • Have the most current version of the INE credential, as it has the most current security locks.
  • Go to your bank branch at least once to update data, or renew plastics, so that there is a biometric identification.
  • If you receive an alert for some alleged irregularity, do not respond to the alert that comes to you, either by message, mail or call, contact the bank directly.
  • Do not trust offers that seem too good to be true, however attractive they may seem.
  • Check the comments of other buyers.

Completing a transaction allows the customer to have a good experience and continue to use online services, which will result in that person coming back and recommending you to other potential buyers.

Anti-fraud technology

With the advancement of technology, it has been possible to use everything from biometric data to the use of artificial intelligence to identify possible theft attempts, the interviewees agreed.

The purpose is to offer additional security mechanisms; however, they can also obstruct a purchase, due to issues such as forgetting a password or username, to problems that go beyond the customer.

One of the first tools implemented in Mexico to prevent and avoid identity theft was the use of biometrics -fingerprint, facial recognition- and they were implemented by the Afores.

“One of our large clients, a large bank, once we implemented biometrics in branches, in six months we saved 300 million pesos in identity theft fraud,” Chavarría said, noting that this money, in addition to of savings for the bank, it also represented fewer problems for users of said bank.

The top 5 of the largest banks in Mexico is made up of BBVA, Santander, Banamex, Banorte and HSBC, according to Rankia.

The cost of this technology has dropped significantly, from about $70 per user to $2-3 in a decade. “The return on investment is very clear,” said Chavarría.

In addition to the use of biometrics, or passwords that are later forgotten, which can obstruct the purchase and cause user frustration, there are other technological tools to validate the identity of users, said Saraí Baeza.

Hence, now data analysis and artificial intelligence “allows us to calculate the probability of how risky a transaction is” and if it is really the user who is trying to make a transaction, or if it is a fraud attempt.

There are more than 50 variables of a transaction that are taken into account to make a customer identification, added the vice president of Conekta, from the items you are buying, the time you usually do your shopping and the hours in which the establishments record their highest sales.

Four out of 10 payment attempts are rejected, according to data from the AMVO that Saraí Baeza took over. Hence, it is a responsibility of the businesses to have a robust gateway that allows for processing and acceptance capacity, as well as security.

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