Scam Calling: The Risk of Not Fighting Back

There is a real danger that customers will lose confidence in voice communications if the rise in scam, robocalling and fraudulent calls goes unchecked. Already, many users are refusing to answer their ringing phones. The result is legitimate companies such as banks, insurers and health services are unable to reach their customers, increasing their costs and pressurising them to find new contact solutions.

It is madness that scam calling is happening on such a large scale but with standards and regulations being introduced in the UK and beyond, at least the industry is trying to do something about it.  However, we mustn’t make the mistake of thinking the challenges have been addressed.  The fraudsters are highly sophisticated and organised.

It is certainly possible to identify many types of scams by applying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to carriers’ traffic data. And together with a growing awareness of the problem there is some level of protection. However, service providers must take a proactive stance to identify scam calls on their network, to understand the scale of the problem, and to take the next step to block them.

In Australia for example, a regulation to reduce scam calls was introduced in December 2020. The country lost A$48 million to scam calls that same year. To fight back, Australian telco Vocus adopted Tollring’s Scam Protect solution across its entire network.

Vocus can now automatically monitor millions of daily calls across its network and access analytics on alerts and types of potential scam calls. It can spot patterns of activity such as very short duration calls or calls that are outside of known CLI numbering.

If the industry works together, scam calls can be blocked. There is a real opportunity to fight back and rebuild faith in voice by using tools to ensure the legitimacy of calls.