It’s good to offer your customers or clients the chance to open an account with your company. Here you can offer them many benefits and increase their chance of return buying or booking, such as by allowing them to set order preferences, save their payment and address information, and even work towards loyalty points or subscribe to your premium services.
Yet it’s also true that customer accounts if you’re not careful, can be overtaken. From exposed emails to passwords, to data theft, all the way up to fraud from the customer side as they seek to abuse your free trials by using multiple accounts, it’s important to consider how you can secure these accounts and why it’s important to prevent fraud in their name.
As we cannot control every variable of our customer’s life and how they interact with our services, which of course is a great thing, we need to consider how we’ll integrate certain solutions from our side to limit the impact of customer account theft, or at least provide customers more autonomy in protecting themselves.
With that in mind, let’s consider the following advice:
Multi-Factor Authentication
Multi-factor authentication is a great means by which to secure customer accounts, and it also encourages them to care about the integrity of their account with you. This can be applied in a few ways. SMS authentication with a registered phone number can be a great place to start, for example.
This way, whenever logging in from a new device or location, then your user can verify they are who they say they are with a code. If their account is compromised, then the person in control of the information will not be able to verify themselves and get further into the sensitive details of the account, such as its saved address or financial information.
You may also find real value in providing authentication codes through apps, often provided by a QR code. Users can then scan this code through an app like Google Authenticator or Authy; allowing this to generate a code that can then secure and register their account. This is even more secure than SMS authentication because it cannot be spoofed and the code will never be intercepted.
Fraud Prevention Utilities
Fraud prevention is essential when it comes to ensuring your users can verify themselves. This is why a fraud prevention API set into your website or account registration tools can be so useful. On top of that, integrating identity checks, verifications for address, and more depending on the nature of your relationship with your users can be key.
For example, some challenger banks or financial apps that operate solely through mobile platforms will ask for a selfie video saying a certain phrase, and a scan of a passport or driver’s license. While you may not require such identifying information, you can see how fraud prevention metrics like this make such a profound difference in verifying each user.
Temporary Account Locks & User Verification
Sometimes, you may not be able to identify if a given account has been compromised, but it can be worth training your system to temporary lock accounts if you suspect it has been. So for example, if an account is logged into from two different countries within a short time span, if new card information is changed, if all the identifying information like the address, phone number, password and email address are changed in short order, then your system will lock the account pending review.
You may then ask your user for documents to prove who they are, or get in touch with them to ask if they verify the actions taken on that account. This can then help you quickly unlock the account if you were in error, or keep it on hold if it was compromised.
You may save some people a great deal of stress or having to take the issue of unwanted payments up with their bank if you do this, and it can certainly help you avoid having to worry about issuing unnecessary refunds or trying to placate the stolen user data that might have been lost.
With informative emails showcasing IP address logins, orders, and bookings, you can also keep your customers aware of everything going on in their account, allowing them to contact you should they notice anything missing or suspicious.
With this advice, you’re sure to secure your user’s accounts in the most pressing manner, doing so with care and consistency. If this is non-intrusive, your customers are sure to thank you for the effort.
