That’s the word from the Jumio Consumer Insights Study: Fraud and Identity, which found that the leaving-blank activity signals a consumer desire to have merchants verify their IDs, acting as a homegrown, makeshift security measure.
“With millions of people facing serious issues of identity theft, consumers are now taking extra steps to create their own protection mechanisms so that other people cannot misuse their credit and bank cards,” said Marc Barach, chief marketing and strategy officer at Jumio, in discussing the results. “Regardless of the explicit consumer demand, too many merchants are not taking the necessary actions to confirm that a person conducting a transaction is actually who they say they are.”
Due to the lax attitudes of retailers, nearly one in every three (29%) respondents in the US report they’ve completed a purchase under someone else’s name. Demographically speaking, women (33%) are more likely to have made a purchase with a friend or family member’s credit or debit card than men (24%), and those ages 18–34 (51%) are far more likely than all other age groups to have done that: ages 35–44 (30%), 45–54 (21%) and those ages 55+ (16%).
Those ages 35–44 (33%) are more likely to have experienced fraud than those ages 18–34 (18%) and those 45–54 (24%); men in the 35–44 age group are at the highest risk (37%).
There are in general growing consumer fears over credit card fraud, be it physically at the point of sale or regarding e-commerce. More than one-quarter of Americans (26%) reported that a fraudulent charge has been made to their bank account or credit card by someone else, Jumio noted in the survey results. And nearly one in four people have been victims of online payment fraud specifically.
Overall, Americans are more likely to be at risk for fraud than their UK counterparts, with less than one in five Britons (19%) saying they’ve been a victim of fraudulent charges in a related study, with women being more than a third more likely to report fraudulent charges on their accounts than men.
And in the UK, only 23% confessed they’ve made a purchase either online or in person with a friend or family member’s credit or debit card (with or without permission) – six percentage points less than in the US.
However, 79% of Brits have indicated that they are concerned about online ID theft. Of those concerned with ID fraud, the vast majority (82%) were specifically concerned about fraudulent activity on their credit card or bank account.
“It is testament to the British people that so many of them are aware of online security pitfalls – but what is worrying is the lack of infrastructure to tackle ID fraud in the UK,” said David Pope, marketing director for Jumio in Europe. “While most merchants realize that fraud is a major problem, they need to look at their role in prevention, including taking the necessary steps to confirm that a person conducting a transaction is actually who they say they are.”