October 2025 Fraud Update: How ISVs can Prepare for the Holiday Season

As the holiday season approaches, businesses are preparing for increased online shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which also heighten the risk of fraudulent activities such as artificially inflated traffic (AIT) and webform abuse. Twilio's October 2025 Fraud Update highlights the significant rise in AIT, particularly SMS pumping fraud, where malicious actors exploit digital forms to generate non-genuine traffic, leading to unexpected charges for businesses. It also points out the surge in automated bots and malicious activities targeting webforms, which can degrade data quality and harm business reputations. Twilio advises businesses, especially independent software vendors (ISVs), to implement proactive security measures, such as advanced fraud detection tools, CAPTCHA, and multi-factor authentication, while monitoring for abnormal traffic patterns to safeguard against these threats. In case of fraud incidents, businesses should promptly change credentials, enable geo-blocking, and consult Twilio support for further assistance in analyzing and mitigating security issues.