A new Identity Fraud Report, conducted by Onfido, has revealed that passports are the most frequently attacked form of identity document. In fact, over the course of the past year, fraudsters increasingly forged passports as opposed to national identity cards. Onfido’s researchers believe this to be a sign of fraudsters changing their methods: “they [are choosing] to target the one-sided passport page, rather than a two-sided ID card, and target the most high-assurance document in the hope that a passport’s reputation will help the fake go undetected.”
Despite modern identity documents featuring multiple security features that should make modifications easy to detect, fraudsters’ tactics are gaining in sophistication, meaning the forgeries are becoming increasingly convincing. The study revealed that throughout 2021, 47% of all identity document fraud cases were weighted as “medium” in sophistication – a 57% increase compared with 2020. Consequently, identity theft has also seen a surge, with the average fraud rate over the past year being recorded at 5.9%
