Efforts to Stop Caller ID ‘Spoofing’ and Robocalls Detailed in New Industry White Paper
PISCATAWAY, N.J. – May 11 2017 – Telemarketers and robocalls using spurious Caller ID to trick consumers into answering their phones – also known as ‘spoofing’– are the primary source of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) complaints and reports of telecom fraud, and the problem is increasing at an alarming rate.
A new industry white paper titled, Caller ID: The Impact of Robocalling and Spoofing, has been released that provides a brief overview of the issue as well the techniques being developed to help alleviate the problem. The paper is provided by iconectiv, an authoritative partner of the global communications industry.
In the telecommunications industry, spoofing refers to the illegal practice of manipulating Caller ID to mislead consumers in accepting unwanted calls from live telemarketers or automated pre-recorded messages, also known as robocalls. According to the FCC, fraudulent Caller ID hit a record 1.7 million calls in the first four months of 2016, up 41% from the previous year.1 Disreputable parties use spoofed Caller IDs to either avoid regulatory penalties or to impersonate banks and other entities to defraud consumers.
The paper looks at the efforts of academic researchers and leading telecom associations and companies to develop the SHAKEN (Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs) standard, a framework that provides end-to-end cryptographic authentication and verification of the telephone identity and related information. Leveraging the standard, iconectiv has developed a solution that can, among other important functions, identify the point of origin to better determine if the Caller ID has been misrepresented or altered.
Uniquely positioned to assist in the mitigation of spoofing and robocalling, iconectiv’s core competencies include highly scalable industry database management, numbering services (the company will soon serve as the U.S. Local Number Portability Administrator), identity/authentication and network fraud prevention for the telecommunications industry.
1 Phone Scam 'Onslaught' Has Authorities Scrambling, The Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2016
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