Synthetic Identities and Advanced Bots Drive 8% Rise in Global Fraud Attacks — What Businesses Need to Know

Fraud is getting smarter, faster, and harder to detect. A new Cybercrime Report from LexisNexis Risk Solutions reveals that fraud attacks worldwide rose by 8 per cent over the past year — fuelled by synthetic identities, increasingly sophisticated bots, and the growing use of AI-driven automation by cybercriminal networks.

The findings are drawn from analysis of more than 116 billion online transactions processed through the LexisNexis Digital Identity Network in 2025, making it one of the most comprehensive views of global fraud activity available.

Synthetic identity fraud — the fastest growing threat

One of the most alarming findings in the report is the explosive growth of synthetic identity fraud. Now involved in more than one in ten cases globally — 11 per cent — it represents an eightfold rise year on year, making it the single fastest-growing fraud type worldwide.

Unlike traditional identity theft, synthetic identity fraud does not steal a real person's identity outright. Instead, cybercriminals combine fragments of stolen personal data — a real name here, a fabricated address there — to create entirely new fictitious identities. These are then carefully developed over time, building credit histories and digital footprints designed to avoid detection and maximise financial returns before the fraud is discovered.

For businesses, this means fraudulent actors may have been operating within their platforms for months or even years before being identified.

Bots are evolving — and becoming nearly indistinguishable from humans

The report also highlights a sharp rise in malicious bot activity, with bot-driven attacks increasing by 59 per cent over the past year. What makes this particularly concerning is how sophisticated these bots have become — they are now capable of mimicking human behaviour with remarkable accuracy, including replicating cursor movements and interaction patterns that traditionally helped businesses identify automated threats.

At the same time, a new category of threat is emerging — agentic traffic. These are automated digital agents capable of interacting online in ways that closely resemble human behaviour. This type of activity surged by 450 per cent between January and December 2025, particularly in credit card transactions and logins to gaming and gambling platforms.

While not all agentic traffic is malicious, the report notes it introduces significant new challenges for fraud detection systems that were not built to distinguish between humans, legitimate bots, and malicious automated agents.

The sectors most under attack

The report identifies e-commerce, gaming, and gambling as the most heavily targeted sectors:

• E-commerce fraud attack rates rose by 64 per cent year on year
• Login attacks — used to take over customer accounts — increased by 216 per cent
• Gaming and gambling platforms saw a 76 per cent increase in global attack rates

These figures point to a deliberate shift in strategy by cybercriminal networks — moving away from one-off opportunistic attacks toward systematic, automated campaigns targeting the full digital customer journey.

What the EMEA data means for your region

For businesses operating in the EMEA region — which includes the GCC and broader Middle East — the findings are particularly significant. EMEA recorded a 27 per cent rise in fraud year on year, the first significant increase in the region in several years, driven primarily by account takeover attempts.

EMEA also leads globally in first-party fraud — where customers themselves defraud the organisations they do business with — accounting for 51.7 per cent of all reported cases in the region. This is the highest proportion of any region worldwide and reflects a growing challenge for businesses trying to balance customer trust with fraud prevention.

For GCC businesses expanding their digital services — particularly in e-commerce, fintech, and digital banking — these trends represent a direct and growing threat to both revenue and customer trust.

The bigger picture — fraud is scaling with AI

"Fraud continues to evolve at pace with digital innovation," said Stephen Topliss, vice president of fraud and identity at LexisNexis Risk Solutions. "Cybercriminal networks are scaling automation, shifting tactics and probing for any available weaknesses across the digital customer journey. Increasingly, attackers rely on advanced bots and AI-driven tools to mimic human behaviour and test defences with unprecedented speed and accuracy."

The report's findings reflect a broader shift that cybersecurity experts have been warning about — fraudsters are now using the same AI and automation technologies that power legitimate digital commerce to scale their operations. The result is a threat landscape that is evolving faster than many organisations' defences.

Is your business prepared?

If your organisation operates an e-commerce platform, accepts online payments, or manages customer accounts digitally, the threat landscape described in this report is directly relevant to you. The rise of synthetic identities and advanced bots means that traditional fraud detection approaches — built around catching known patterns — are no longer sufficient on their own.

Speaking with a digital risk or fraud prevention specialist about where your current defences may have gaps is a practical first step. The businesses best positioned to stay ahead are those investing now in intelligence-sharing, advanced analytics, and the ability to distinguish between humans, bots, and automated agents in real time.