FRAUD INTELLIGENCE
Understand the abuse targeting your business.
Fraudulent offers and suspicious activity can reveal where businesses are being targeted. IFD helps teams understand emerging abuse techniques, interpret available evidence, and identify relevant data and verification options.
How IFD gathers intelligence
IFD reviews observable offers and activity across underground marketplaces, explains what is advertised and what the available evidence supports, and connects those observations to potential abuse patterns and relevant controls.
Note: Observed activity in underground markets indicates that certain techniques are being offered or discussed. It does not confirm that every business is being actively targeted by every technique listed here.
BOT-001
Bot Signups & Fake Registrations
Automated registrations, bot form submissions, and fabricated account details are among the most commonly advertised fraud techniques. Bots can create accounts at scale, bypassing basic validation with generated or recycled identity data.
Business impact
Inflated user counts, wasted acquisition spend, downstream abuse of trial offers and referral programs, and degraded data quality.
Relevant capabilities
IP intelligence, email validation, phone validation, device risk intelligence and fingerprinting
Evaluate solutions →DUP-002
Duplicate Accounts & Account Farming
Multi-accounting involves creating multiple accounts—sometimes hundreds—under different identities. Accounts may be accumulated for later misuse: resale, incentive extraction, or coordinated abuse.
Business impact
Repeated exploitation of signup bonuses, referral rewards, and free-tier limits. Accounts may be sold or used in coordinated campaigns.
Relevant capabilities
Device risk intelligence and fingerprinting, identity consistency signals, application risk data
Evaluate solutions →ATO-003
Account Takeover & Credential Abuse
Credential stuffing uses lists of previously breached username and password pairs to attempt logins at scale. Successful takeovers give attackers access to stored payment methods, loyalty balances, and personal data.
Business impact
Customer harm, unauthorized transactions, support costs, and reputational damage.
Relevant capabilities
IP intelligence, device risk intelligence and fingerprinting, phone validation
Evaluate solutions →SUB-004
Subscription Abuse & Account Resale
Fraudulent upgrades, unauthorized access to paid subscription tiers, and organized resale of compromised or fraudulently obtained accounts are regularly advertised in underground markets.
Business impact
Revenue loss, unauthorized access to premium features, and potential liability for compromised customer accounts.
Relevant capabilities
IP intelligence, device risk intelligence and fingerprinting, identity consistency signals
Evaluate solutions →PRO-005
Promo, Trial & Referral Abuse
Repeated exploitation of free trials, signup bonuses, coupons, and referral incentives. Techniques range from simple duplicate accounts to coordinated networks of synthetic identities.
Business impact
Direct financial loss from redeemed incentives, distorted acquisition metrics, and increased cost per genuine customer.
Relevant capabilities
Email validation, phone validation, device risk intelligence and fingerprinting, IP intelligence
Evaluate solutions →LAF-006
Lead & Affiliate Fraud
Fake leads, misleading form submissions, and fraudulent acquisition activity inflate reported conversion numbers and divert marketing spend. Bot-generated leads and recycled identity data are common techniques.
Business impact
Wasted acquisition budget, distorted performance data, and downstream processing costs for invalid leads.
Relevant capabilities
Email validation, phone validation, IP intelligence, application risk data
Evaluate solutions →IDF-007
Identity & Application Fraud
Stolen or synthetic identities, repeated use of the same identity across multiple applications, mismatched details, and suspicious submission velocity are observable patterns in application fraud.
Business impact
Credit losses, regulatory exposure, and downstream costs from processing fraudulent applications.
Relevant capabilities
Identity consistency signals, application risk data, biometric and ID verification
Evaluate solutions →PAY-008
Payment Fraud & Card Testing
Card testing involves submitting small transactions to verify whether stolen payment credentials are active. Successful tests are followed by larger fraudulent charges or resale of verified card data.
Business impact
Chargeback costs, processor penalties, and potential account suspension for merchants with elevated dispute rates.
Relevant capabilities
IP intelligence, device risk intelligence and fingerprinting, transaction risk scoring
Evaluate solutions →SMS-009
SMS Pumping & Verification Abuse
SMS pumping involves artificially generating OTP or verification message requests to numbers controlled by fraudsters who share in the termination revenue. This is distinct from voice-based toll fraud, which involves different infrastructure and revenue mechanisms. Both can inflate communications costs without delivering genuine users.
Business impact
Significant messaging cost inflation, degraded verification reliability, and wasted engineering resources.
Relevant capabilities
Phone validation, IP intelligence, device risk intelligence and fingerprinting
Evaluate solutions →ADC-010
Ad & Click Fraud
Automated clicks, invalid traffic, and manipulated acquisition signals inflate reported ad performance and divert spend away from genuine users. Residential proxies and device spoofing are commonly used to evade detection.
Business impact
Wasted advertising spend, distorted attribution data, and inflated cost-per-acquisition figures.
Relevant capabilities
IP intelligence, device risk intelligence and fingerprinting
Evaluate solutions →Discuss your fraud exposure.
Tell us what you're seeing. IFD can help you understand the techniques being used and identify relevant signals and solutions.