ELF: The Most Important Signal for Stopping Recurring Fraud
By André Ferraz, CEO and Co-Founder at Incognia
Let’s acknowledge the obvious: Fraudsters don’t typically stop after a single infraction.
They often commit as many abuses as they can before their accounts get banned.
And then they switch to new accounts and use new or tampered devices to keep the party going.
Without the ability to stop repeat offenders from coming back, you’re playing ban evasion Whac-a-Mole, and each hammer swing costs money.
This is a challenge faced by many platforms around the world.
That’s why Incognia developed our new Environment Linked to Fraud (ELF) detection.
ELF flags devices as risky if they share indoor positioning signals with devices previously tied to fraud.
Picture this:
- A fraudster commits fraud on a gig economy app and gets banned.
- Switching to a new device, they try to make a new account on the same app.
- ELF detects that the request is coming from a device in an environment previously linked to fraud and returns a high risk assessment.
This is one of the most important signals we have to stop ban evasion, because it’s persistent against device-based obfuscation attempts.
That means that all of the device tricks fraudsters have learned—factory resets, device changes, emulators, app tamperers, app cloners, device farms, etc—can’t stop it from identifying recurring fraud attempts.
But that’s not the only reason it works.
Fraud prevention is all about raising the barrier to entry.
And think about it: It’s a lot harder to move to a new apartment than it is to reset a device.
I’m a firm believer that fraud fighters and vendors need to constantly adapt to stay ahead of fraudsters.
ELF is an innovation that makes recurring fraud harder and gives you more control over your platform’s integrity.
Fraudsters won’t stop on their own, and they won’t wait for us to catch up.
Instead of relying on outdated solutions, let’s innovate.
