Spotting and Stopping Spoofed Calls and Imposter Scams

In our recent webinar with Juniper Research — Spoofed Calls and Imposter Scams: ​​​​​​​How Financial Institutions Can Promote Their Brand and Protect Consumers — TransUnion Senior Director of Product Management Henry Hayter, along with Juniper VP of Telecom Market Research Sam Barker and Research Analyst Georgia Allen, talked about the dangers of call spoofing, particularly when it comes to financial services. The three experts also discussed how businesses can leverage solutions to better promote themselves while protecting their brands and customers. View the webinar in its entirety here.

Below are some highlights from this enlightening conversation.

How does call spoofing impact mobile subscribers?

Georgia Allen: Last year, we estimated consumers lost $65 billion to robocall fraud. A typical example is a mobile subscriber receiving a call with the caller ID indicating it's from their banking provider, when in fact, the call is from a fraudulent actor. The individual called then gives up their bank details or passwords to this cybercriminal — often leading to losses.

Can spoofed calls be stopped, and are businesses at risk as well?

Georgia Allen: Identifying and blocking these fraudulent calls before they reach the consumer is so important because otherwise it’s left to the mobile subscriber to distinguish between a fraudulent and legitimate call, and that’s becoming harder and harder to do.

In terms of the impact of call spoofing on businesses, it can lead to both financial losses and damage to a brand’s reputation. Organizations typically don't even realize it's happening until consumers start complaining.

Henry Hayter: The first questions to ask yourself include: Are my numbers being impersonated? Are customers complaining? The next things to consider are: What are my losses related to telecom? Is fraud increasing, and if so, what else is it impacting? Then, look at other KPIs that correlate to these parts of your business and figure out if you’re experiencing a larger impact than what you can measure?

What solutions are out there for helping to deal with the rise in robocalls and spoofed calls?

Henry Hayter: We have a suite of Trusted Call Solutions (TCS) that help businesses promote themselves while protecting their brands and customers from spoofing and fraud. These include:

Caller Name Optimization (CNO)

• Enables enterprises to take control over how their names appear to consumers over caller ID.
• Registers their numbers with analytics providers to help ensure calls won’t get marked as spam or blocked.

Spoofed Call Protection (SCP)

• Extends the benefits of the STIR/SHAKEN call authentication framework to businesses. It prevents call spoofing — blocking calls before they reach consumers. SCP can help with mistagging by making sure calls show up as authenticated.

Branded Call Display (BCD)

• Consumers are far more likely to answer a call from a business if it displays its name and logo. As soon as we authenticate the calling number, we attach an organization’s name and logo to the call so consumers can see who’s calling and trust it’s been verified.

What sets TransUnion apart from others in the market?

Henry Hayter: The reason communications service providers (CSPs) turn to us to do this job is because of our highly trusted telephone number vetting service which underpins all our solutions.

When we register a number, we know what the business is and know how long they've been in operation. We know the history of that phone number, how long it’s been associated with that company, their typical call volumes, and the use cases for that calling number. We’ve built an entire identity profile around what that calling number is — and how it works.

Can you provide an example of how your services have helped banks?

Henry Hayter: In the US, credit unions are launching online banking services and expanding their offerings to stay more competitive with the larger banks — and subsequently, realizing they have new risks.

Even though a bank or a credit union may be quite small, they still may make a few thousand outbound calls per month. Just one account takeover can result in hefty financial losses. This creates an outsized impact. We've been able to help these financial institutions get in front of this problem and stop it from becoming a bigger issue.

What led Juniper to choose TransUnion as a global leader in robocall mitigation?

Sam Barker: Branded calling will help instill trust in voice calls again by providing a visual representation on the phone screen — telling consumers exactly who's calling. They're going to know the call is verified and what it’s about as well.

Juniper did an independent assessment of companies earlier this year, looking at their solution offerings, innovations and customers they support, as well as the technologies they use. We ranked TransUnion as the global leader in robocall mitigation.  

The acquisition of Neustar put TransUnion in a prime position to leverage its services and solutions — offering them to enterprises and other stakeholders as means to block fraudulent calls, identify the origination of many fraudulent players, and make sure operators, carriers and mobile subscribers are best positioned to avoid incurring financial losses from this type of fraud.

For more information about our award-winning TruContact™ Spoofed Call Protection or Branded Call Display, watch the webinar or contact us today.