Fraud Prevention by Generation
Baby Boomer, Millennial, and other generational labels may not always capture the full diversity of the human experience, but as any marketer can tell you, they do provide some fairly useful and reliable generalizations. One area where the difference between generations can be easily seen is fraud.
Fraudsters don’t discriminate when it comes to age, but the effectiveness of their attacks can vary greatly depending on which decade their target grew up in. In what ways do the various generational cohorts experience fraud differently, and how can this knowledge be used to improve fraud prevention?
Online fraud is pervasive, extensive, and very costly. More than a third of all consumers worldwide can count themselves as recent targets of fraud. Many fraudsters are part of sophisticated operations that run like a full-scale business, with considerable resources and brainpower at their disposal.
Technology and education has made it harder to get away with older and simpler forms of ecommerce fraud, which means that fraudsters are having to invest in more elaborate and convincing schemes.
Just as internet marketers rely on demographic research, personalization, and highly segmented messaging to reach their targets, so too are fraudsters getting smarter and more technologically advanced in their attempts to trick people into giving up their sensitive personal data.
Knowing which generation their target identifies with can be one of the most useful pieces of information for a fraudster.
It tells them what scams their target will be vulnerable to, which communication platforms they should use, what to say, and more.
How Are the Different Generations Defined?
There’s no universal agreement on the exact dates for each generation, but they are generally sorted more or less as follows:
- Silent Generation: 1928-1945
- Baby Boomers: 1946-1964
- Generation X: 1965-1980
- Millennials: 1981-1996
- Generation Z: 1997-2012
While it’s fair to scoff at many of the clichés and stereotypes attached to each generation, the labels can be a useful shorthand way of referring to the shared experiences of culture, world events, and technology that can help predict people’s attitudes and behaviors.
One of the most obvious examples, and the most significant one in terms of fraud, is each generation’s experience with the internet. Boomers, for the most part, would have first encountered it as fully-formed adults. Gen Z, on the other hand, has never known a world without it. What one generation considers to be perfectly normal online behavior might be utterly perplexing to another, and fraudsters are able to exploit this.
How Does Fraud Impact Each Generation?
Put yourself in the mindset of a fraudster selling phony life insurance policies. How are they going to find targets?
Probably not by messaging random young people on TikTok. On the other hand, if they were trying to steal somebody’s UberEats login credentials, cold-calling landline phones would be a terrible way to go about it.
Because each generation, broadly speaking, has different ideas about online communication, commerce, and privacy, age can be a huge factor in determining the likelihood of an individual becoming a victim of fraud.
Young adults may worry about their technologically unsophisticated parents and grandparents becoming victims of fraud—and not without good reason—but in fact, Millennials are the generation being hit the hardest.
They’re 25% more likely to report losing money to fraud than older generations, but it’s not because they’re more gullible.
Fraud is a numbers game, and there are simply more Millennial adults online, making them a target-rich demographic for identity theft and credit card fraud.
The upshot for Millennials is that their individual fraud losses tend to be smaller than those of older generations, who may be targeted for their savings and investments.
What Types of Fraud Should Each Generation Watch Out For?
The first step in preventing fraud is knowing how to identify it. Smart fraudsters will try to match their scams and tactics with the platforms where they are most likely to find receptive targets. Here are the most prevalent threats for each generational cohort:
Silent Generation
Scams targeting senior citizens can be especially painful, sometimes stealing a lifetime of savings from unsuspecting victims. As the least online of the generations, this cohort is often targeted by phone scams. Fraudsters will often impersonate relatives, romantic interests, or government officials to con victims into sending money. Scams involving Medicare, prescription drugs, and social security are common too.
Baby Boomers
Members of this generation tend to be the ripest targets for investment fraud, and they’re reachable by phone as well as by well-established digital methods like text and email. Boomers have gotten comfortable with ecommerce as well, making them frequent targets of parcel tracking fraud.
Generation X
This generation embraced technology at a young age, but they’re old enough to remember the analog world. That might be why they’re not much different than Boomers when it comes to reaching them online—text and email work better than social networks. Many Gen Xers are carrying a high amount of debt, making them targets of debt relief scams and credit card fraud.
Millennials
The largest generation by the numbers, Millennials grew up with a high degree of comfort sharing things online, which unfortunately makes them frequent targets for identity theft, phishing, and ecommerce fraud. Job-related scams are also common. While most Millennials have a social media presence, text is still the easiest way for fraudsters to reach them.
Generation Z
As the first generation to grow up in an internet-saturated world, Gen Z is most easily reached through social media and messaging apps. They’re more likely than their elders to find themselves targets of P2P payment scams involving platforms like Venmo or Cash App, or subjected to account takeover attacks targeting food delivery apps like DoorDash or GrubHub.
Conclusion
Fraud is a problem for consumers in every age group, even if they aren’t all having the same experience of it. While Gen Z may be somewhat less likely to carry credit cards than the older cohorts, the credit card fraud that results in chargebacks for merchants can come from any age group.
However, if your customer base leans toward a particular age range, it may be helpful to take some of these differences into account when writing marketing copy or updating your customer service procedures. When it comes to Millennials versus Boomers, there’s no reason to take sides—you just have to find the best ways to communicate.
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