Free spins, welcome bonuses, and sign-up promotions are all excellent ways to increase sales, build brand recognition, and draw in new clients. But they also draw fraud, which has the potential to cost businesses a lot of money.
By repeatedly signing up for a service using marketing promotions meant for new customers, bonus abuse fraud involves taking advantage of bonus payments and freebies. And bonus abuse is on the rise, costing the online gaming industry, according to reports, about 15% of its yearly gross revenue.
Bonus abuse is reportedly on the rise and costs the online gaming sector 15% of its annual gross revenue.
Multiple identities and affiliate programmes
A clear example of bonus abuse is when a fraudster registers multiple times using different aliases in order to receive the same new customer bonus. By registering using multiple identities, creating multiple accounts, and claiming rewards, fraudsters can easily abandon accounts and continue the process for as long as they remain undetected. The online identity verification procedures frequently cause issues.
Affiliate programmes also appeal to bonus cheaters. The scammer sends leads to online casinos or affiliate programmes for the iGaming industry who are only concerned with sign-up bonuses, commissions on cost per lead, or fabricating traffic to generate commissions on cost per click.
Using false identities to commit fraud
Synthetic identity fraud is the most prevalent fraud scheme in their sector, according to 23% of businesses, according to our State of Digital Identity Report 2022. Fraudsters insert stolen names, emails, and credit card numbers into traditional data sources in an effort to deceive businesses into accepting these IDs as valid and approving registration.
If a digital service is open to synthetic identity fraud, someone or some group will (create numerous fake accounts). Whenever they enter the system, fraudsters are free to launch their attacks.
How do you defeat the bonus cheats, then?
With all this identity fraud deceit, it’s possible that your new customer bonus is underwhelming and costing your company a lot of money. Additionally, it makes it more difficult to distinguish good new customers from bad or fraudulent ones.
You must first identify bonus abuse cheats in order to defeat them, and there are several indicators to look out for.
- Questionable IP
Recurring visitors who use a similar set of hardware and software - Unusual device
Recurring visitors who use a similar set of hardware and software - suspiciously fast
Fraudsters may sign up significantly faster if they’ve done it before. - Unusual exits
Indicators of potential fraudsters include quick cash outs. After registration, fake accounts frequently withdraw winnings or dump chips. - suspicious play trends
Particularly low-risk games with low odds are likely to draw more fraudsters than other games.
Using secure mobile devices, “Mobile Intelligence enables Whitelabel casino or iGaming operators to flag potential fraud in real time.”
Intelligence for mobile gaming
Some of these bonus abuse signals can be expensive to identify or difficult to set up, run, and analyse checks for.
By integrating straightforward API-based data signals into player onboarding and in-person gaming journeys, mobile intelligence enables casino or iGaming operators to flag potential fraud in real time using secure mobile operator data.
- Check the allocation of numbers
Verify that registered mobile numbers are active, legitimate, and have not been cancelled, lost, stolen, or otherwise compromised. - Phone to person connection
In order to prevent the same mobile number from being used more than once, registered mobile numbers are matched with real customer names and addresses. - Signals for SIM swap and call forwarding
Check to make sure the registered mobile numbers are still in use. Flags can be used to intercept SMS or voice OTPs by showing that the associated SIM card has been switched or that call forwarding has been enabled. - Authentication via mobile
Enable secure two-factor authentication to make sure that your customer is holding the registered mobile device when a new account is created or bonuses are cashed in.
Speak to our trust experts about identity verification to stop bonus abuse fraud and make sure your free spins don’t cost your iGaming business a fortune.
