Fraudsters can do a lot of damage with fake accounts. They can promote phony products, spread scams, make fraudulent transactions and even launder money. The impact on the business is often devastating and can lead to negative publicity and loss of revenue.

How to identify fake account fraud, start with the URL bar. Legitimate social media pages will have a custom URL that matches the profile name or is closely related. Also, pay attention to the friend list and who follows this user. If the list is suspiciously short or doesn’t match the person, it could be a red flag.

Similarly, look at the language used in the content of this page or in any comments made on it. If there are a lot of misspellings or generic phrases, it’s likely that the account is fake.

Fake account fraud is most common when a bad actor tries to open a new financial account using a stolen or fabricated identity. This type of fraud is known as new account fraud (NAF) and it costs businesses billions annually.

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Fraudsters try to evade detection by masking their IP addresses, rapidly changing contact information, and more. This makes NAF one of the hardest types of fraud to prevent.

A great way to reduce NAF is to catch fraudsters at account opening by identifying fraudulent government identification documents and passive liveness detection. This can help prevent fraudulent transactions before they can be committed and mitigate the cost of the fraud.