When it comes to identity theft, passports are now the most frequently attacked form of identification. A new report from Onfido detailing identity theft and fraud over the past year found that passports overtook national identity cards as fraudsters’ and cybercriminals’ most forged documents. This points to a shift in the criminals’ methods, as they chose to target the one-sided passport page rather than a two-sided ID cart. It is also likely that the fraudsters hope that the reputation of passports will help the fake go unnoticed.
Onfido has a team of document fraud specialists that process millions of identity documents every year, helping clients to detect fraud across 2,500 different document types issued by almost 200 different countries. Onfido’s report is based on data collected between October 2020 and October 2021. Other key findings that the report discusses include that fraudsters prefer to create a fake document from scratch rather than alter a genuine ID. Although modern identity documents often have several security features that make modifications detectable, fraudsters are consistently creasing sophisticated forgeries.
Read More: Passports Now Most Attacked Form of ID
