Caller ID spoofing and unscrupulous robocallers are ways that criminals seek to defraud victims, altering or spoofing the Calling Line Identification (CLI) of their outbound telephone calls to deceive the called party. This deception intends to thwart call analytics used by operators to protect their subscribers and increase the likelihood that the called party will answer a robocall. While the US and Canada have made strides in preventing scam calls, Europe and other countries are still lagging.
In July 2022, the ‘Europol ploy’, a mass-scale scheme by fraudsters, stole millions from Europeans. Criminals successfully impersonated Interpol and Europol officers, opting for quantity scamming over quality, making any mobile user a target. CLI played a central role in the scam as the criminals provided authentic phone numbers that convinced victims that they were being contacted by actual officers, even when victims searched for the phone numbers online.
However, telecommunications operators have ways of protecting their customers from these types of fraud. Squire Technologies and TransNexus have partnered to deliver STIR/SHAKEN, a solution that enables operators to perform call authentication on voice calls. The STIR/SHAKEN solution allows operators to authenticate and digitally sign calls they originate and verify signed calls they receive. This technology reassures operators and their subscribers that the CLI is not spoofed.
The award-winning management and protection software provided by TransNexus, and the world-leading core network signalling products of Squire Technologies combine to make the ideal fraud-prevention solution for telecoms operators who want to protect their customers from these types of criminal deceptions. With TransNexus being in the US and Squire Technologies in the UK, the businesses can more easily offer their STIR/SHAKEN solution to a global market, placing fraud prevention and robocall mitigation and prevention within reach of hundreds of telecoms operators.
Increasing numbers of scam and robocalls are putting pressure on legislators to act. As laws are implemented to curb problem phone calls, as France has done with the Naegelen Law, mobile operators will soon feel pressure to adopt STIR/SHAKEN solutions.
