Synthetic identities are made to look like real customers with good credit scores and histories, but are fabricated by fraudsters to perpetrate fraud. These identities are generally based on a Social Security number (SSN), or a credit privacy number (CPN). They are made up of blended information which combines real and fake data such as an address from one person mixed with another’s SSN or CPN. Synthetic identity theft is often difficult to spot because there is not a victim reporting the activity right away because of the nature of how they are created. The rise of this identity fraud is likely due to factors such as: widespread data breaches, dark web data access and availability, EVM card enhancements, and the competitive lending landscape, which values customer experience to the point where it creates gaps in identity fraud management processes.
