Policy Violation and Fraud on Food Delivery Apps Uncovered by Incognia Trust & Safety Report
Data indicates a direct relationship between policy violation and fraud on food delivery mobile applications
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Palo Alto, CA -- December 8, 2022 -- Digital identity company Incognia announced the publication of its new Trust & Safety Report titled Policy Violation & Fraud: How They Relate on Food Delivery Platforms. The report begins by comparing how four of the top food delivery platforms from the US, Europe and APAC address three core Trust & Safety policies within their consumer and courier Terms of Use. Incognia then highlights Q3 customer data from 58M food delivery users and couriers to analyze whether there is a direct relationship between devices flagged for policy abuse and those that commit fraud. Throughout the course of the study, Incognia uncovered hundreds of thousands of Trust & Safety policy violations on both consumer and courier delivery apps and identified which policy violations have the highest correlation with confirmed fraud.
The report focused on three specific Trust & Safety related policies: creating multiple accounts, unauthorized account access, and attempts to manipulate the platform. With fraudulent intentions, abuse of these policies can lead to numerous scams including fake account creation for promotion and refer abuse and card testing, account takeover for identity and payment credential theft and location spoofing and app tampering for platform manipulation.
Not all policy abuse is fraud, however many of the behaviors associated with policy violations are red flags, such as the use of emulators and GPS spoofing, because they make it easier to commit fraud and go undetected. For example, location spoofing and app tampering techniques are being used by couriers to “beat” the delivery logistics algorithms and gain access to preferred jobs resulting in negative experiences for both other couriers and consumers, who may need to wait longer than usual. Trust & Safety teams should work to achieve visibility of these abuses by leveraging automated risk signals designed for gig economy companies. With this report, Incognia is hoping to generate further awareness of the impacts of policy abuses, both those that lead to fraud and those that do not.
The following are key insights uncovered in the Incognia report:
- Courier devices are more likely to be rooted or jailbroken, open 5+ accounts, hold accounts accessed by 5+ devices, use location spoofing, and show signs of app tampering
- Courier devices with signs of app tampering are 391x more likely to be associated with confirmed fraud as compared to consumer devices
- Consumer devices running emulators are 327x more likely to be associated with confirmed fraud as compared to courier devices
“The correlations between policy abuse and fraud highlighted in the report tell us that Trust & Safety teams are still underserved by the fraud solutions on the market today,” said André Ferraz, co-founder and CEO of Incognia. “As the growth of the food delivery industry stabilizes, it will be even more important that Trust & Safety teams have the automated signals they need to proactively identify suspicious behavior. Without intervention, the abuse of Trust & Safety policies by bad actors and the escalation to fraud will continue to negatively impact platform integrity, consumer and courier experiences and loyalty, and ultimately brand reputation and top-line growth.”
To access the full report and the analysis included in it, download Policy Violation & Fraud: How They Relate on Food Delivery Platforms here.
About Incognia
Incognia, a digital identity company, has created a spoof-proof Location Identity to silently authenticate customers throughout their digital journey. Fraud and operations teams at food delivery, ride-sharing, social media and eCommerce marketplace companies use Incognia to authenticate trusted users without friction and detect suspicious behavior to prevent new account fraud and ATO. Today, Incognia’s network includes over 200M devices globally.
Incognia is a venture-backed company headquartered in California, with teams in New York and Brazil. Stay connected and follow Incognia on Twitter and LinkedIn. Visit Incognia.com to learn more.
