22% of Daters Report Suffering Account Takeover Fraud

22% of online dating users have reported being a victim of scams, in the for of Account Takeover Fraud (ATO) over the past 12 months.

According to new research from Sift, one-fifth of the online daters that were surveyed said that their dating account had been hacked in someway.

ATO fraud attempts to steal from consumers and e-commerce merchants swelled 282% between Q2 2019 to Q2 2020.

It was found to be most prevalent on eCommerce sites (61% of reports said their eCommerce accounts had been hacked), followed by social media sites (36%), financial services sites (35%), and travel sites (16%). 

Jason Tan, CEO of Sift, said in a statement to Tech Republic: “The surge in account takeover attacks indicates that merchants can’t leave the burden of account security to their customers.

“Rather, companies should treat account protection as part of the overall customer experience and as a key part of their digital trust and safety strategy, which allows for seamless transactions while preventing fraud.”

A report from the Federal Trade Commission found that Americans lost $201 million to all romance scams in 2019, an increase of 40% from the previous year. This makes the fastest-growing type of fraud in the country.

Read more here.