Frogo CEO warns aggressive anti-fraud measures hurt user retention

Overly aggressive anti-fraud measures are actively draining revenues and damaging user retention in the digital gaming industry, according to Frogo CEO Volodymyr Todurov. He argues that legacy systems tuned for extreme precision create excessive friction for legitimate users. Todurov advocates for a new framework based on a "presumption of innocence" powered by behavioral intelligence. He says this approach can detect sophisticated fraud while minimizing disruptions for honest customers.

Todurov criticized the industry's traditional "block first, ask questions later" doctrine. He said that while blunt measures like CAPTCHAs, account locks and session suspensions stop some fraud, they leave a trail of collateral damage. "The only 100% secure platform is one with zero users," Todurov wrote, referencing an old saying among risk teams. He stated that treating every user as a potential threat by default is a guaranteed way to murder retention.

The CEO explained that most legacy anti-fraud engines are tuned for extreme precision, meaning they aim to be almost 100 percent sure a transaction is fraud before blocking it. To maintain this high precision, he said, these engines set hyper-rigid thresholds that only flag blatant threats. Todurov said this creates two invisible disasters: sophisticated fraudsters easily bypass rigid thresholds, and operators deploy heavy, friction-laden checks across the entire user base to catch the fraudsters that do get flagged. "Every extra second of friction at login or checkout cuts your conversion rate," Todurov wrote. He warned that when a trustworthy, high-value user gets hit with an unexpected identity check during a time-sensitive transaction, they often close the app and go to a competitor. Todurov estimates that in a healthy digital ecosystem, 95 to 98 percent of traffic consists of honest users.

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His proposed modern risk framework operates on a presumption of innocence, trusting trustworthy users by default while maintaining hyper-sensitive radar in the background. Achieving this balance requires moving from static rule sets to a multi-layered identification matrix. This includes frictionless login using stable session-to-device mapping, recall-first detection to capture subtle anomalies early, and dynamic thresholds that recalculate risk scores based on real-time deviations from a user's historical baseline. Todurov provided an example of a VIP user logging in from a new device while traveling. Under a legacy approach, the system would flag the account, block the transaction and demand KYC documents, resulting in a furious user who churns forever. A smart approach, he said, would detect input anomalies and cross-browser links in less than 0.5 seconds, recognize the interaction signature of a genuine human, and allow the transaction to proceed smoothly.

"By replacing blanket bans with surgical, behavioral monitoring, operators stop treating anti-fraud as a cost center that disrupts operations," Todurov wrote. "Instead, risk management becomes an invisible guardian of user experience." He concluded that fixing anti-fraud philosophy does not mean accepting higher risk, but working smarter with data. Todurov invited industry members to meet the Frogo team at SiGMA World at Stand H1-1047 in Hall 1 to discuss tailored anti-fraud strategies.