How do MVR driving records help fraudsters defeat identity verifications?

A confounding find recently allowed us to uncover another tactic fraudsters have been taking advantage of to defeat fraud identification systems. Identity verification has seen more complex responses to an ever-increasing number of security checks. There are liveness checks, security features, tampering, presentation attacks, and many more reviews for each document uploaded by a user. When someone uploads their driver's license, they don't know there might be hundreds of data points derived from the image to determine authenticity in the backend. This factor has caused the more diligent fraudsters to step up their game to break down each defense in place.

 One strong defense used is a MVR which is a motor vehicle report. You might be asking why do fraudsters care about my driving record. They aren't out to underwrite your insurance but are looking for specific data points from the report to create fake IDs. Nowadays, it is trivial to create perfect-looking IDs that are almost impossible to detect fakeness. However, the data from the ID is where there can be cross-references that prove authenticity. The name, date of birth, address, and ID numbers are usually easily accessible through one of the many means of data breaches or online fraud services. These are easy to access and input in the driver license template creators. However, what can't always be found easily is the issue date, height, weight, hair, and color eyes. Companies are now using data from the DMVs to cross-reference what the actual IDs have on them.

If a fraudster uploads an ID with perfect matching data except for the weight off, it could be a red flag that the ID is not original. These steps can show you how in-depth fraudsters will go to bypass a security system. They know the ins and outs to pull the right lever for approvals. The fraudsters have automated the MVR lookup process with Telegram bots and self-service websites to make matters worse. Now the scale is that much more prominent, making it a trivial data point for identity theft. This type of scaling can be achieved by fraudsters setting up fake/spoofed business accounts with legitimate sellers of MVRs.

Trust Swiftly uncovered this fraud while working on a case to prevent this abuse. In the end, the fraudsters were relentless in creating fake businesses as the operation was highly lucrative to resell MVRs. One aspect to note is these lookups cost a significant amount compared to other data such as SSNs, so they will be usually reserved for high payout thefts like loans. Unfortunately, to defeat this fraud comes with no simple solution. At Trust Swiftly, we take a layered and dynamic approach to each user, allowing us to keep bad actors on their toes. It is necessary to stay ahead of each new fraud attack as fraudsters learn and adapt, as seen in the case of MVR fraud.