You did everything by the book. Vetted the carrier, checked every document. Got the rate con back. Then the load disappeared. That’s the new face of freight fraud in 2025.
Email is rapidly becoming one of the most exploited vulnerabilities in freight today. In the latest quarter, Highway blocked 495,267 fraudulent email attempts, a whopping 41% spike compared to the previous quarter. Bad actors are looking for any opportunity to gain access to sensitive load details. The point of entry? Your inbox.
The Attack Vector: Compromised Inboxes
Many strategic cargo thefts today are started with a compromised inbox. Once inside, bad actors don’t just watch, they blend in. They read the threads, watch for patterns, learn your workflows, and wait for the perfect moment to intercept critical details and pose as the legitimate carrier. By the time the load is picked up, there’s been no red flags until the broker is calling the carrier for an update and there is no answer.
Here’s the playbook:
- A fraudster tricks a real carrier into entering their credentials on a fake login page through a phishing scheme.
- Now inside a legitimate carrier’s inbox, the attacker monitors communication silently—watching for rate confirmations, sensitive documents, or any opportunity to intercept a transaction.
- Take the rate con, for example. When a broker sends a rate con to a carrier, the fraudster will intercept it, often deleting the thread before the carrier ever sees it.
- With the paperwork in hand, the bad actor impersonates the carrier, shows up at pickup and disappears with the stolen load.
This isn’t theoretical. It’s operational and it’s happening at scale.
The Solution: Highway’s Secure Rate Con Delivery
To stop inbox-based fraud, there are two things Brokers and Carriers must do.
- Enable multi-factor authentication in your inbox. Especially if you are using a public email provider like Gmail, Yahoo, etc. MFA is the most effective way to prevent unauthorized access.
- Adopt Highway’s new Secure Rate Con Delivery feature.Instead of attaching rate confirmations in your email,with Highway, Brokers are able to send a secure email to the carrier requiring them to sign in to Highway to authenticate their identity to ensure they are the verified carrier to receive the rate con.
This new security feature provides several important benefits for carriers:
- Protection from fraudulent activity targeting your business
- Immediate notifications when new rate confirmations arrive
- Greater control over which personnel receive rate confirmation notifications
- Simple, secure authentication process to access documents
- Direct reply capability to maintain efficient communication with brokers
The Bigger Picture: Identity-First Load Security
Inbox-based fraud isn’t going away. In fact, the Q2 data points in Highway’s Q2 Freight Fraud Index Report show continued growth in these attacks through the back half of 2025, as fraud rings get smarter, faster, and more sophisticated.
Secure Rate Con Delivery is part of a larger mission: to bring identity-first security to every load. Every transaction. Every time.
This is about more than blocking today’s attacks. It’s about building a resilient foundation that closes vulnerabilities before they’re exploited, ensuring the freight industry is protected not just now, but against whatever comes next.
To learn more about Highway’s Secure Rate Con Delivery solution, schedule a demo here.
