Around 50% of travel agents seen in global research approved by eNett International in late 2018 saw digital travel frauds as the main problem when making transactions to retailers. The four most-viewed cases were stolen transaction method information, cyber-attacks of online booking websites, and withdrawn security information.
As stated by the Scam Attack Index issued by the eCommerce fraud detection in November 2019, travel fraud rates against airlines rose by 62% over the previous year. This might be attributed to the increase in loyalty programs declarations and information hacks which made data of thousands of clients available for buying airline ticket scams.
Digital travel frauds against ground shipping have increased by 40%. Due to this, it may be due to car rentals and ride-sharing having stolen some conventional barriers, such as proof of identity, from the user experience.
Fortunately, travel companies can shield themselves with robust online travel prevention mechanisms without affecting the user experience. Let’s dive deeper into some of the most prevalent threats along with fraud detection techniques.
Prevalent Types of Digital Travel Frauds:
The techniques that criminals use for extracting cash and significant data from travelers and businesses involve, but are not restricted to:
Fake Ticket Cancellations
Using stolen debit card details, criminals buy refundable tickets. Then, they request to cancel and money in on the reimbursements. Especially, they have been actively exploiting ground shipping return procedures, cashing in on hijacked digital train and bus tickets upon arrival at the locations. When criminals cancel airline tickets, they yet earn the rewards which they can resell or utilize to buy genuine tickets.
False Travel Companies
Criminals develop fake travel companies, and then either purchase tickets or hold on to them with false information. Travelers pay complete prices for these fake tickets only to view their airfare as false or have been viewed as fake. When they attempt to get compensation, the false travel company would no longer be there.
Resort Price Spike
A collision between a resort and a criminal using stolen debit cards may take hold. The resort would increase costs for its rooms, and the criminals will reserve them through an OTA. The OTA becomes liable for spending the chargebacks of the more expensive expense. If they attempt to seek how the resort book non-existing individuals, the resort would have all the fake documentation.
Chargebacks / Friendly Fraud
Online travelers can deliberately misuse the chargeback procedure to get something for free. Digital travel frauds are prevalent, and they can influence travel agents as well. For instance, a traveler buys an extravagant vacation package through travel intermediaries, but even one perspective of the journey can make them oblige a chargeback on the complete vacation.
Cyberattack
Any travel-associated intermediary that prepares a huge volume of user data can be the target of an endeavoured breach. It can affect the business repute and leave it open to potential legal action.
Identity Scam
An identity scam is a crime of getting the private or monetary data of different individuals to use their identity to commit fraudulent activity, such as performing illegitimate payments or purchases.
Facial Recognition for Digital Travel Frauds
Regulatory authorities are always looking to find the loophole in a social framework that might lead to digital travel frauds. Air terminals adopt face verification to recognize the suspects, and if a match is detected in the dataset of fraudsters, it can be adopted as evidence to pursue a lawsuit against them.
The police authorities are still operating on this initiative as the social activists have found privacy-associated ambiguity in it.
How Does Facial Recognition Operate?
Face verification in the present world is not just about recognizing a face, but it includes a lot more than that. The system is now powered by AI devices that effectively find criminals in less than a minute. How can the travel sector profit from it? The face verification system uses an artificial intelligence algorithm and uses the present methods for enhanced authentication results.
As the companies have a huge and clear idea to play, completely using the potential of this technology restrained with data protection methods will direct to retainable extension. A facial recognition solution allows them to onboard users and to enable safe login to them in the upcoming year.
