MWC21 Spotlights How Trusted Communications is Protecting Consumers, Brands and Bottom Lines

iconectiv experts provide insights into industry-led fraud-fighting initiatives

• What’s the News: MWC21 attendees will hear first-hand how innovative industry initiatives such as Registered Caller, STIR/SHAKEN and GSMA Verified Sender are steadily rebuilding consumer trust in voice calls and messaging. 
• Why it Matters: Spam and illegal robocalls have caused consumers to stop answering their calls. That's not surprising considering the $1.82 billion lost annually due to fraudulent activities, including “wangiri” one-ring scams. This poses a significant challenge for legitimate businesses trying to reach consumers with important information and is costing service providers time and money investigating and combating fraud and nuisance communications.

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. – June 15, 2021 – Illegal robocalls, SMS spam and “wangiri” one-ring scams are among the types of fraud and nuisances that afflict consumers worldwide each day. Legitimate businesses suffer because consumers are ignoring calls and texts from numbers they don’t recognize —meaning important alerts, reminders and other notifications go unanswered.

“Trust is the foundation for communications and consumer engagement and it is being steadily eroded by illegal robocalls, smishing, wangiri and other fraud,” said Richard Jacowleff, CEO, iconectiv. “Thankfully, the tide is turning on fraud through industry-backed solutions like STIR/SHAKEN, Verified Sender and Registered Caller. These solutions highlight how iconectiv and other industry leaders worldwide are providing the technologies and processes to help legitimate businesses get their calls answered and engage with their customers.”

At Mobile World Congress, iconectiv will showcase the innovative ways that service providers, regulators, trade associations and other industry stakeholders are successfully mitigating fraud and spam. These initiatives are key for rebuilding consumer trust in voice calls and messages:

• The Secure Telephone Identity Revisited/Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs (STIR/SHAKEN) framework gives service providers the tools needed to cryptographically sign and verify calling party information. The U.S. was the first country in the world to implement STIR/SHAKEN, while the UK is among others considering adopting the STIR/SHAKEN model. In September, updates to the U.S. policy, which will impact foreign service providers using U.S.-specific North American Numbering Plan resources will go into effect.

• Registered Caller™ is the industry-backed, centralized telephone number registry that helps restore consumer trust in voice calls by verifying the identity of the business calling. The collaborative initiative facilitated by CTIA® and built on iconectiv TruReach Intel provides trusted and legitimate enterprises with a streamlined, cost-effective process for registering phone numbers on a single platform. Voice service providers and analytics engines can then use this vetted information provided to make more informed call-treatment decisions.  
• GSMA’s Verified Sender initiative verifies the identity of businesses when they send Rich Communication Services (RCS) messages to consumers. RCS is rapidly emerging as a powerful new way for businesses to interact with customers. Establishing a framework that fosters trust is key for protecting it against the spoofing and fraud that plagues SMS.
• TruNumber Protect enables service providers to block many types of fraud and suspicious activity by providing a comprehensive database of high-risk and unallocated number ranges. By providing intelligence about telephone numbers worldwide, TruNumber Protect reliably cuts down on wangiri fraud, one of the top five fraud types. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently confirmed that voice service providers may block calls from phone numbers that are highly likely to be associated with one-ring robocall scams without fear of liability. This safe harbor also applies to international calls terminating in the U.S.

iconectiv is leading these and other major trust-building industry initiatives. Since 2019, iconectiv TruReach Certify has been deployed as the foundation of the U.S. Calling Number Verification Service. As part of that service, iconectiv has served as the U.S. Secure Telephone Identity Policy Administrator (STI-PA) for STIR/SHAKEN. iconectiv was also one of the world’s first Verification Authorities to support GSMA Verified Sender.