A recent survey looking into the evolution of fraud trends in the UK throughout 2008 indicates that the type of fraud which registered the most significant growth in the past year is the so-called facility takeover, also known as account takeover.

This applies to cases when criminals take over victims’ legitimate accounts, usually via phishing or telephone scams. According to the report, another means employed by third parties to gain access to bank accounts and carry out illicit transactions is by intercepting credit cards and statements. Overall, data shows that in 2008, account takeover registered a 207 percent increase year-on-year.

Another trend outlined in the report refers to identity fraud, indicative of two contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, the study indicates that the number of victims of identity theft has declined by 3.7 percent in 2008 compared to 2007. On the other hand though, the UK registered a 5.7 overall increase in the number of successful ID theft cases – that is, cases which were detected after some type of delinquency had already occurred.

According to representatives of CIFAS, the UK not for profit fraud prevention and data sharing scheme which conducted the survey, the two seemingly contradictory trends derive from a phenomenon driven by the current financial crisis. Thus, it would seem that fraudsters currently prefer to create false identities in order to gain access to credit lines, which are currently granted under much stricter criteria than before, rather than take over the identity of genuine account holders, whose credit applications risk being rejected by financial services providers.