Origin Based Routing Fraud problem

Origin-Based Routing Fraud problem

Telephony fraud is not new, in fact there were fraud schemes reported as  far back as the 1950s.  Over the years,  as the complexity of the telephone networks have increased so has the creativity of fraudsters looking to make money. The 2021 CFCA Global Telecommunications Fraud Loss Survey estimated the amount of revenue loss resulting from fraud schemes to be $40 Billion, which was over a 25% increase from the 2019 survey estimate.

Phone number verification plays an essential role in the detection and prevention of telephone fraud. The TMT TeleShield service uses TMT Analysis’  unique data assets that are consistently extended and updated as its foundation.   It includes analysis of mobile and fixed phone numbers, with the goal of identifying phone attributes that contribute to assessing the fraud risk for a number. Through integrating a variety of data sources, TeleShield provides an accurate and living representation of the propensity for a number to be fraudulent, putting the power to identify and stop global telephony fraud in our customers’  hands.

We recently worked with a customer who was being billed a high level of surcharges as a victim of  Origin Based Routing (OBR) fraud schemes.  In an OBR scam, fraudsters can spoof the calling number (A number)  to make it appear like it is coming from a country with a low call termination rate. This is a type of telephony by-pass fraud, which in the 2021 CFCA Survey was estimated to be $2.6 billion.

We were approached by an international wholesale provider that had been billed tens of thousands of Euros in call surcharges because originating numbers were identified as invalid by the terminating operator. The service provider wanted an independent analysis of the originating numbers, most of which they suspected were spoofed.

TeleShield’s analysis confirmed the customer’s suspicions, 91% of these calls were not valid numbers:

• 75% – numbers had invalid formats.
• 3% – numbers were missing valid country codes.
• 7.4%  – numbers looked  valid but had other attributes that confirmed they were invalid

In summary, TeleShield can be easily integrated into customer business processes to facilitate their saving tens of thousands in fraud damages. It provides:

• robust solution with multiple access options e.g., query (ENUM, HTTP, SIP) and batch service;
• access to up-to-date information; and
• intelligent routing fabric that enables real-time number queries that strengthen authentications and evaluation of fraud risks