Loading...

Can you ever take a vacation from fraud?

Published: September 8, 2010 by Matt Ehrlich

Ah…the summer vacation. I’ve just returned from mine and it got me wondering, “Do fraudsters take a vacation?” You know they must. Probably somewhere nice courtesy of their illicit activities. On our summer vacation, we stayed in rental homes rather than in hotels because of the convenience of having a kitchen, more space to move around, etc. There are many websites that provide vacation home rentals, either offered by an agency or directly by the owners themselves. It would be interesting to know how many (any?) of these sites have Identity Theft Prevention Programs in place for their clients and prospective renters. Although Red Flags rules do not apply to this industry, certainly some fraud best practices and a proactive risk management approach is good for business.

In the case of the homeowners dealing directly with prospective renters, what struck me is that there is quite a bit of trust involved in these arrangements. It’s safe to say that most transactions, like ours, are conducted over email and/or the phone. Payment is collected in advance by check or credit card but in our case, and in many if not most others, there is no deposit. Since I work daily around commercial and consumer fraud, I couldn’t help but wonder what the exposure is for fraud risk and identity theft – both to the home owner as well as to the person renting the home.

Just look at the information exchanged…

The renter provides: name, address, phone number, email address, check (which would include account and routing number) OR credit card number and expiration date.

The owner provides: name, phone number, email address, and a home or office address (to which the renter mails the payment). Additionally, the renter knows of a second address associated with the owner – the rental property itself!

With account takeover fraud still quite prevalent, that’s quite a bit of personal information that both parties know about each other. Now, the fact that these types of rental transactions occur often and without many (at least publicized) known fraud and identity theft incidents seems to indicate that people on both sides are trustworthy. Still…it does make you think of the exposure if one of the parties is less than honest….say a fraudster on their summer vacation?

Related Posts

...

Published: June 6, 2023 by admin

According to Experian data analysis and a recent study on unemployment insurance fraud, at least 25% of new claims are a result of identity theft.

Published: April 15, 2021 by Eric Thompson

It’s critical for credit unions to understand the specific threats presented by life online and be prepared with a fraud detection and prevention plan

Published: April 13, 2021 by Alison Kray

Subscription title for insights blog

Description for the insights blog here

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Categories title

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

Subscription title 2

Description here
Subscribe Now

Text legacy

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source.

recent post

Learn More Image