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Other fraud factors

In this article, we look at further fraud factors: technical, professional and social enablers as well as social engineering.

Other fraud factors include the following:

Technical enablers	Professional enablers	Financial enablers
These include malware, unlicensed paysites emails, social engineering (which we will look at later), fake websites, and the use of internet.	These are professionals with specialist knowledge, who are aware of weaknesses in organisations and their processes (eg, accountants, IT specialists, solicitors, doctors).	Some examples of these are digital currencies (which we will look at later) and money laundering.

Let’s look at one of the technical enablers, social engineering, in more detail.

Social engineering frequently involves the criminal piecing together information from various sources, such as social media or discarded mail, in order to appear convincing and trustworthy. Its eventual aim is to gain access to confidential personal information and defraud the victims.

Some of the methods used in social engineering include pretending to be an employee of the victim’s bank, insurance company, phone provider, etc, distributing fake surveys, offering fake gifts or convincing the victims that they are being contacted to help with an issue (for example, payment issues, software updates or computer viruses).