“2018 witnessed the largest increase in attempted ID fraud in five years and this highlights why organizations need to use more sophisticated digital identity verification solutions to take extra precaution during the online account opening process, especially during the holidays.” – Philipp Pointner, Chief Product Officer, Jumio

After a bit of a lull in 2017, fraudsters were back in business over the Black Friday – Cyber Monday weekend this year, suggest the findings of Jumio‘s second Holiday ID Fraud Report.

Defining fraud as an attempt to manipulate government-issued IDs in order to create new online accounts, Jumio found an expected bump in fraud attempts during the busy holiday shopping period, with fraud jumping 22 percent compared to the year’s overall average.

But the larger trend is much more worrisome, with Jumio reporting that online identity fraud increased 109 percent between 2014 and 2018. That’s a sobering assessment after Jumio’s holiday fraud report last year found a dip in fraud attempts of 17 percent.

Elaborating on the trend in Jumio’s report, Chief Product Officer Philipp Pointner said, “2018 witnessed the largest increase in attempted ID fraud in five years and this highlights why organizations need to use more sophisticated digital identity verification solutions to take extra precaution during the online account opening process, especially during the holidays.” Pointner did not mention any particular solutions by name, but with a growing range of biometric authentication systems now on the market – including Jumio’s acclaimed and popular Netverify system – organizations have every opportunity to help reverse this fraud trend in 2019.