Fraud Definitions

Dark Web

The Dark Web, What is it?

The entirety of the web that is not accessible by search engines. Regular browsers, like Google and Bing, search the so-called “surface web", defined by public links, and the search stops there. The "Deep Web" and "Dark Web" are more in-depth, allow for privacy, and serve different purposes. When discussing them, it is important to remember their distinctions, as there are many. 

The "deep" portion of the web is just like it sounds — below the surface and not completely dark. For instance, online banking pages, legal and government documents, or scientific reports have no reason to be indexed. Personal emails and secure information, like bank statements, can also not be searched.  

The dark web, however, represents a sliver of the deep web. While many of its websites are generally harmless, it is often associated with illegal activities, and this can lead to serious consequences. Like the deep web, this portion of the web is unindexed. However, the websites are also encrypted, and this level of anonymity is why it is often dedicated to criminal activities. These sites are hosted on special domains, and you need special software to access them, such as the Freenet or TOR browser. 

The Dark Web's Risk to Your Business

A nearly infinite supply of stolen payment cards and identities can be acquired on the dark web. The cost of an identity can range from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars, depending on the detail. Many sellers offer guarantees as to the data’s validity and will provide replacement identities if out of date or inaccurate. Escrow services are available for larger purchases and fraud-as-a-service, using local proxy servers, can further improve the odds of illicit transactions getting past anti-fraud systems.

Monitoring programs can also be customized within certain bounds to address gift card and digital product theft, the sale of credentials and customer data by insiders, and other specific merchant challenges.

Learn More & Protect Your Business

To learn more, visit the Dark Web Monitoring page on our website, and contact us today to talk with our experts and receive a free demo.

Data Breaches

A data breach, also known as a data leak or data spill, is an event that includes the illegal inspection, access or retrievial of data by a person, an application or otherwise a service. It is a form of security breach that is intended to steal or broadcast the data to an unsafe or illicit site.

Data Capture

Data capture, or electronic data capture, is the process of extracting information from a document and converting it into data readable by a computer.

Data Enrichment

Data enrichment is defined as the merging of third-party data from an external authoritative source with an existing database of first-party customer data. Brands do this to enhance the data they already possess so they can make more informed decisions with a larger pool of higher quality data.

Data Mining

Data mining is the process of investigating concealed configurations of data rendering at different viewpoints for classifying valuable data, which is gathered and collected in standard zones, such as data warehouses, for effective investigation, data mining systems, assisting the corporate decision-making process plus further data needs in order to finally reduce costs and raise revenue.

Data Points

A data point is defined as a distinct component of data. In a broad common sense, every single detail is considered as a data point. In an arithmetical or systematic framework, a data point is typically imitative in terms of size or investigation and can also be exemplified in an arithmetic and/or detailed manner.

Data Protection Act

The Data Protection Act (DPA) is a United Kingdom law passed in 1988. It was established to manage how individual or consumer data could be used by any organizations or government organizations. It protects the public and also provide some instructions on how to use the data people's data.

Data Provider

The term data provider is used to describe the process of retrieving data from relational data sources in non-real time applications. The data provider manages the data at each stage by mapping the logical column definitions in the application view to physical table columns in the customer database.

Data Science

Data Security Standard

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a widely recognized set of rules and policies proposed to improve the security of cash, debit and credit card transactions and also to protect credit cardholders, to prevent the mismanagement of their private data. The PCI DSS was formed in association with four major credit-card companies: Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express in 2004.

Data Set

Data set is an assortment of data. Usually a data set match up to the subjects of a distinct database table, or otherwise a particular arithmetical data matrix, where each single column of the table indicates a specific variable, and each row match up to a set of affiliates of the query data set.

Day of the Jackal Fraud

What is Day of the Jackal Fraud?

Day of the Jackal Fraud is an identity fraud technique in which the birth certificate of a dead child is used to obtain a passport or some other certified identity document. This kind of fraud gets its name from the book which has the same name/title, written by Fredrick Forsyth. Day of the Jackal Fraud dwindled after the UK cracked down on the crime in the mid to late 2000s.

Day of the Jackal by Fredrick Forsyth vs. Day of the Jackal Fraud

The book centers around a professional assassin contracted by a French paramilitary organization conspiring against Charles de Gaulle, the president of France. The assassin is unique in that his true identity is always unknown, codenamed “The Jackal,” who acquires a legitimate British passport using the name of a deceased man. The Jackal specifically searches graveyards to find the headstone of a child who, if he had not died, would be roughly the same age as him. Then, he buys a copy of that child’s birth certificate and applies for a passport, now possessing a new identity to carry out his mission. 

The recognized crime “day of the jackal fraud” operates in the same manner as The Jackal’s instance of identity fraud. Fraudsters apply for a passport under a false name, usually someone deceased and one without much of a history. Once they have that passport, they effectively have a new identity with which they cannot be tracked.

How Prevalent Is It?

In 2003, BBC reported that around 1,500 possibly fraudulent passports were being granted in the UK each year, although the actual number may be higher. In any case, identity fraud including Day of the Jackal fraud cost the government 1.3B GBP per year around 2003, until records transitioned to a computer database that could more easily flag names of the deceased being used for passport identity fraud by cross-referencing names with the Office for National Statistics (ONS). 

In 2007, the United Kingdom Identity and Passport Service (IPS) uncovered about 1,200 cases of passport applications using identities of deceased people, and stopped 700 new fraudulent applications, virtually ruling out this type of fraud with “Operation Wisdom”, launched in 2004. Since 2007, there are only rare cases of day of the jackal fraud attempts - it is now virtually insignificant in the UK, although other countries that lack record digitization or automated security may still face this problem today.

Why Is This Important?

Day of the Jackal Fraud is a form of identity fraud and application fraud - identity fraud still targets businesses, governments, and consumers today, at alarming rates as the methods of constructing a false identity have evolved. Although government agencies are more likely to stop identity fraud with their access to public identity information, businesses and their consumers could still be at risk from application and synthetic/false identity fraud. 

Learn more:

• Definition - False Identity Fraud 
• Blog - What is Synthetic Identity Fraud?
• Blog - Synthetic Identity Fraud is Proving to Be Challenging and Stealthy
• Blog - Top 7 Steps for Preventing Loan Application Fraud

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