Increasingly digitalisation, while aiding businesses in improving engagement with customers, has enabled scammers to create fake accounts for committing fraud.
Cifas, the UK’s leading fraud prevention service, revealed in its annual Fraudscape report in 2025 that an astonishing 421,000 cases were filed to the National Fraud Database (NFD) in 2024 – a 13% increase on 2023, and the highest number on record. Identity fraud remains the most prevalent case type with 250,000 identity fraud filings recorded in 2024 – an increase of 5% on 2023 – accounting for 59% of all filed cases to the NFD.
The good news is implementing effective customer verification processes can go a long way in identifying and preventing the creation of fraudulent accounts.
With the appropriate customer verification technology in place you can not only verify the name of a customer, their contact telephone number, postal address, and email address, but also source their device location in seconds, with each data point tested against a wide array of reliable data sources. This way you can ensure that the customer is who they say they are.
The process involves four key steps:
- Integrity verification: This is all about checking every core data point the prospective customer provides – postal address, phone number, etc – against dependable global sources of data in real time. This way, you are confident that you have the correct details to start with.
- Augmentation and extension: Customer records can be augmented with potentially missing contact information when scanned against authoritative global sources of data from government, utility and credit agencies, which further supports customer verification. For example, a missing postcode can be added to an address, a phone number, email ID and its status to a customer record. Importantly, it’s this additional data that also aids organisations in improving customer communications, enabling them to drive revenue and deliver a standout user experience.
- Consistency check: The third step connects the core data points with additional ones sourced in the action above. Thorough cross-checking between the two sets of data helps in determining consistency, and supports the standardisation of contact information formats, making it easier to manage and analyse.
- Quality Assessment: The last action involves zeroing in on the overall precision and quality of customer records. This sees every element of the record receive a quality score that is numeric, and the record itself assigned a confidence score. This is the stage where it becomes easy to spot and eliminate customer accounts that seem high-risk or suspicious.
How can you effectively deliver all this?
Name verification
Firstly, access a name verification service that can analyse, format, and gauge name accuracy at the customer onboarding stage. One with the ability to filter names based on origin, syntax, phonetics, and so on. Such a tool needs to shed light on names that are fake or bogus, with verification filters used for the purpose including nicknames, vulgar words, and celebrity names.
Address verification
Matching a name to an accurate, verified address is vital. Any discrepancy could highlight a possible fraudster and must be investigated further. Also, obtaining address accuracy is very important because those addresses that are incorrect or not complete can be costly to your business when it comes to shipping. Sending products to the wrong location leads to returns and redeliveries, which results in hefty financial losses. This an issue with about 20% of addresses entered online containing errors, such as spelling mistakes, wrong house numbers, and incorrect postcodes. Using technology to deliver address verification globally it’s possible to rectify and verify addresses across hundreds of countries.
A good starting point is to use an address lookup or autocomplete tool that provides an accurate, properly formatted, standardised address at the customer onboarding stage as the user starts to enter theirs. Employing such a service can reduce the number of keystrokes needed when entering an address by up to 81 per cent, accelerating onboarding, improving the overall experience, and significantly increasing the likelihood that an application or purchase is completed. Additionally, similar tools can correctly collect email addresses, telephone numbers and names at the first point of contact.
Phone verification
Phone number verification plays an integral role when it comes to verifying customer data. By implementing phone verification organisations can derive insights such as the names of current and past users of the number, history of number porting (transfer), the mailing address for the number, geographical coordinates of the address, type of phone (residential or commercial), and type of line, like landline, wireless or VOIP.
Email verification
Free email accounts such as Outlook, Gmail, and Yahoo tend to be popular with fraudsters, as these can be set up conveniently and also offer anonymity. Which is why it’s vital to use an email verification service that has a whole host of filters and conducts numerous checks to obtain insights into an email ID’s risk status. This should include flagging email addresses that are vulgar, bogus, or known for spam, and highlight if emails can be delivered without any hiccup to the stated IDs.
IP address location
As part of the customer verification process source a service that can identify the geographic location of the IP address of the prospective customer. IP addresses must be cross-referenced against the addresses provided for shipping and billing, to detect transactions that are risky or fraudulent. For example, if the IP location of the customer’s mobile device is nowhere near the shipping address they have provided, further checks are essential. An IP address finder service has another key advantage for organisations, in providing insight for location-based marketing purposes.
In summary
By leveraging intelligent techniques for verifying contact details, including name, address, email ID, contact number and IP address, you can ensure the quality and accuracy of a customer account, thereby deliver effective customer verification, while avoiding AI-driven fake records. This not only prevents fraud, but also strengthens your marketing strategy by supporting informed targeting. At the same time you will adhere to regulatory standards, earn the trust of authentic customers – driving increased venue – and secure your reputation among multiple stakeholders.
Barley Laing
Barley Laing established and leads the UK office of US-headquartered global data quality and ID verification business, Melissa.
As Managing Director, with 28 years of technology and data industry experience, his role is focused on meeting the data quality, address and ID/compliance needs for organisations in the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, and beyond.
