• Products

    Digital Trust & Safety Platform

    Fight fraud without sacrificing growth

    Learn more

    Platform solutions

    • Payment Protection
    • Account Defense
    • Dispute Management
    • Content Integrity
    • Sift Connect
    • Passwordless Authentication

    Sift innovations

    • PSD2 Solution
    • New Releases & Enhancements
  • Industries

    One solution, any industry

    Learn how Sift can work for your industry

    Learn more

    Featured Industries

    • Fintech
    • Payment Service Providers
    • Retail
  • Customers

    Case studies by industry

    See how leading brands succeed with Sift

    Learn more

    Featured Customers

    • DoorDash
    • Uphold
    • Paula’s Choice
  • Partners
  • Fraud Center
  • Resources

    Fraud-fighting resources

    Explore fraud trends and insights

    Learn more

    • Blog
    • Demos
    • Infographics
    • Ebooks & Reports
    • Videos
    • Podcasts
    • One-Pagers
    • Webinars
    • Trust & Safety University
  • Company

    Why leaders choose Sift

    Technology, community, and partnership

    Learn more

    Our mission: Help everyone trust the internet

    • About
    • Careers
    • News & Press
Talk to an expert
Products
  • Digital Trust & Safety Platform
  • Payment Protection
  • Account Defense
  • Dispute Management
  • Content Integrity
  • Sift Connect
  • Passwordless Authentication
  • PSD2 Solution
  • New Releases & Enchancements
Industries
  • Fintech
  • Retail
  • Payment Service Providers
Customers
Partners
Fraud Center
Resources
  • Blog
  • Ebooks & Reports
  • One-Pagers
  • Demos
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • Infographics
  • Podcasts
  • Trust and Safety University
Company
  • Search Careers
  • Our Company
  • Contact Us
  • Engineering Blog
Talk to an expert Sign in
  • Blog Home
  • Content Fraud
  • Data & Insights
< prev / next >
Share this article on LinkedIn
Tweet this article
Share this article on Facebook
SOCIALICON
Share this article via email

[Report] Digital Trust & Safety Index: Content Abuse and the Fraud Economy

By Arwen Heredia  / 

8 Jul 2020

Content abuse comes in all shapes, sizes, and scams, and the methods behind it have steadily become smarter and more sophisticated since the dawn of digital business. Despite herculean efforts by trust and safety teams to interpret fraud trends and better fight internet criminals, fake content is a uniquely sinister vehicle for hijacking data—because, like any well-constructed ruse, all it needs to be is believable.

In our just-released report, Digital Trust & Safety Index: Content Abuse and the Fraud Economy, we’ve surfaced new consumer insights and data from Sift’s global network to explore how content abuse impacts e-commerce, how it serves as part of an interconnected fraud supply chain alongside payment fraud and account takeover, and what merchants need to know to stop malicious content from harming customer loyalty and stunting growth.       

Shifting markets mean new targets for fraudsters

At any given time, fraudsters are looking for opportunities—lax security measures, human error, poor password hygiene, anything that allows them to steal the information they need to commit whatever crimes they’re attempting. With the coronavirus pandemic mutating a once-predictable e-commerce market into a global guessing game, the ways in which content fraud worms its way into advertising, forums, social media channels, dating apps, two-way marketplaces, email, text messages, and everywhere that customers and companies communicate have changed shape, scope, and scale. 

Between January and May of 2020—during which COVID-19 snowballed from possible rumor into worldwide crisis—digital marketplaces were hit especially hard by content fraud. According to Sift global network data, attempted content abuse rose by 109% during this time frame as compared to that same stretch in 2019. An analysis of abuse types showed that nearly half of this content fraud was financially motivated, too, with scams making up 46.8% of the content abuse blocked by Sift. 

The above illustration details the percentage of user-generated content that was fraudulent, broken down by vertical, across our customers’ websites and apps in the first half of the year (all of which was blocked by Sift). As shown, ticketing and events merchants were heavily targeted, a data point that continues to be supported as we track the pandemic’s impact across e-commerce. This vertical has seen major fluctuations in fraud rates and event volumes week-to-week, and Sift’s Trust and Safety Architects suggest that the erratic trends are likely connected to fraudsters’ usual M.O.: an attempt to exploit consumer fear and unrest. For the many people struggling with stunted incomes and lockdown orders, travel scams offering free getaways or ticketing scams surrounding non-existent streaming concerts make for some tempting bait.

But our research found that content abuse isn’t just an ideal vector for pirating data from individual shoppers—it’s also a primary catalyst for one of the worst things that can happen to any business: brand abandonment.

Content fraud costs more than money

According to the consumers surveyed* for this report, customers are constantly on the lookout for malicious content. And for good reason: they believe (correctly) that it’s everywhere. Over two-thirds (70%) say they’ve run across it on social networking sites; 40% have found it while perusing classifieds; 33% have encountered it on some type of digital marketplace; and 31% have discovered fraudulent content on the discussion forums they frequent. And while we could chalk this data up to circumstance and opinion, it doesn’t especially matter whether consumers’ perception is accurate. It’s what they do once they’ve been victimized by scams—or think they’re at risk of being victimized—that merchants really need to pay attention to.

As illustrated above, we found that 56% of consumers would immediately—and permanently—spend their money with a brand’s competitors after being impacted by content abuse. The thought of losing over half of your customers in the wake of a well-oiled scam is scary enough, but this level of brand abandonment does damage beyond driving major churn. Customer acquisition costs (CAC) would subsequently rise. The lifetime value (LTV) of each of those lost customers (not to mention the brand advocacy and growth they could have driven) would go right down the drain, too—likely right alongside the company’s reputation. 

Facing (and Fighting) a Digital Epidemic

Make no mistake: fraudsters are organized, resourceful, and adaptable. And though some prefer to fly solo, fraud rings—wherein multiple people work together to commit fraud—are not uncommon, and can be especially detrimental in serve-yourself marketplaces where user-generated content is critical to the business model. 

In this report, you’ll learn how Sift’s data scientists surfaced exactly this type of organization, what they discovered, where in the world it came from, and what trust and safety teams can look out for to keep collaborative criminals from infiltrating digital storefronts with malicious content. You’ll also gain insight into the covert economy hiding just beneath the surface of e-commerce, how consumers think about content fraud, where this vector typically originates, and the types of fake content most often circulated online. 

Download Sift’s Digital Trust & Safety Index: Content Abuse and the Fraud Economy to dig into these findings and develop the fraud-fighting strategies your business needs to stay well ahead of scams, spam, and everything in between. 

*On behalf of Sift, Dynata polled 1,000 adults across the United States via online survey, age 18+, between June 1 and June 8, 2020.

Related

consumer insightscontent abusecontent frauddigital e-commerce frauddigital frauddigital transactionsDigital Trust and Safetydynamic frictione-commerce fraudfake contentfraudfraud economyfraud managementfraud preventionfraud ringfraud solutionsfraud supply chainmachine learningmalicious contentphishingriskscamsSiftsift datasift data networksift global data networkspamtrust and safetytwo-way marketplace

Arwen Heredia

Arwen Heredia is Sift's Sr. Content Marketing Manager. She's a life-long writer, mom of girls, baker, bookworm, and dancer. You will know her by the trail of bobby pins.

  • < prev
  • Blog Home
  • next >
  • Company
  • About Us
  • Careers
  • News & Press
  • Partner With Us
  • Blog
  • Support
  • Help Center
  • Contact Support
  • System Status
  • Trust & Safety University
  • Fraud Management
  • Developers
  • Overview
  • APIs
  • Client Libraries
  • Integration Guides
  • Tutorials
  • Engineering Blog
  • Social

Don’t miss a thing

Get industry trends, insights, and actionable fraud-fighting tips.

You're on the list.

You can unsubscribe at any time. Please see our Website Privacy Notice.
Do Not Sell My Personal Information

If you are using a screen reader and are having problems using this website, please email support@sift.com for assistance.

© 2023 Sift Science, Inc. All rights reserved. Sift and the Sift logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sift Science, Inc.
Privacy & Terms

Secure your business from login to chargeback

Stop fraud, break down data silos, and lower friction with Sift.

  • Achieve up to 285% ROI
  • Increase user acceptance rates up to 99%
  • Drop time spent on manual review up to 80%
Your information will be used to contact you about our service and subscribe you to our direct marketing communications. You can, of course, unsubscribe at any time. Please see our Website Privacy Notice.