Scam Robocalls -What You Need To Know
The fact that you are receiving more unwanted robocall scams on your smartphone than ever before is not your imagination. These calls are actually rising at a faster rate, according to the Federal Trade Commission. This is due to the fact that mobile phones are a must-have item for practically every adult in the United States of America these days. This has resulted in an exponential increase in the number of robocalls in recent years, with the forecast only seeming to become worse, particularly in 2022.
Another important factor is technological advancement. Robocall campaigns are becoming more accessible as technology becomes more affordable. When a robocall is made, this article will describe the process that takes place as well as the many sorts of frauds that might occur.
An explanation of what constitutes an automated telephone call (robocall).
Unknown to the caller, the computer system generates a robocall, which plays an automated message in order to compel the recipient to perform some action.
The goal is to keep the individual on the phone in order to receive a response, or the goal is to get the person to speak with a live operator in order to collect personal information from them both. It’s important to remember that not all robocalls are harmful. Never know who is on the other end of the phone when you pick up.
The use of robocall systems to communicate with patients or parents is possible and common in both the medical and educational fields. Maybe even some political candidates who are running for office have come to your attention. Robocalls are legal and do not pose any danger to the recipient’s phone number. Some robocalls, on the other hand, are made for nefarious reasons.
How can you know whether you’re being scammed when a robocall is placed?
Phone Scams Using Automated Dialing Systems
Scams in the field of health insurance
One of the most regular and pervasive robocall scams in 2018, according to consumeraffairs.com and other similar websites, is health insurance. When someone answers the phone, a recorded message will play, in which the caller is encouraged to sign up for different kinds of health insurance plans and is even offered assistance navigating the health insurance marketplace. The month of October saw more than 850,000 robocalls about health-related issues.
Scams involving the Internal Revenue Service.
As a matter of fact, more than 4.5 million complaints against these types of calls were filed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alone in 2017. Scammers use voice recordings to trick people into believing they have to pay an IRS tax obligation that doesn’t exist.
Scams in the field of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
In this case, a recorded message informs the individual or company that if they do not call back the phone number supplied, their listing on Google would be removed from the search engine. This is the farthest thing from the truth, and it should be disregarded completely.
What should you do if you get a robocall is something you should research.
Take a deep breath and let it go! Not every button that allows you to communicate with someone should be pressed. – If the recording asks you a question, don’t answer it with your words. As a result of your actions, they may have difficulties, and they may get even more robocalls from crooks in the future.
However, blocking the number straight from your smartphone is unlikely to be effective since robocalls may simply be spouted with numbers from other locations.
Report the number and your interaction with it to authorities such as the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”). Alternatively, you may contact them directly at 1-888-382-1222 or by visiting their website.
How to Spot Fraud in Call Centers
Businesses operating in today’s omnichannel ecosystems have several possibilities to commit fraud. The good news is that many businesses are taking the threat of fraud and security breaches seriously and are taking advantage of every chance to safeguard themselves and their consumers. One area that is readily neglected, however, is the way in which fraudsters may infiltrate contact center operations.
Between 2016 and 2017, contact center fraud grew by 113 percent, from one in every 2,000 calls to one in every 937 calls, according to the National Crime Prevention Council. Und despite the fact that many businesses alter their fraud detection procedures when new methods of attack are revealed, fraudsters never cease to find new ways to get beyond the protections in place to protect themselves.
The game of volleyball that is fraud prevention is a never-ending one, and knowing how contact center fraud happens and what you can do to reduce it will help you keep the ball in your court.
Call centers are a popular target for scammers since they are easy to impersonate.
When it comes to fraudsters, call centers are frequently regarded as “soft” tools since they allow them to pose as a genuine client and collect personal information that may be used to perform other acts of fraud elsewhere.
Because it is difficult to track acts of fraud back to the contact center, call centers are often used as a vehicle for fraudulent activity. Many call centers are unable to link data from call centers to actions that take place on other communication channels. Therefore, many institutions often ignore trends that may suggest fraudulent conduct — and so miss opportunities to prevent fraud from developing in the first place — in their operations.
Regardless of the routes via which fraudsters perpetrate fraud, the call center is a critical component at some stage in the process. Call center agents are often targeted by scammers in order to get sensitive customer information that may be used for account takeovers or other illegal actions further down the road. In rare instances, fraudsters may take advantage of a financial institution’s contact center in order to conduct application fraud on the spot.
Call center fraud will continue to be a problem for businesses and their consumers unless they put in place the appropriate customer identification tools and procedures, as well as a mechanism to identify high-level trends and prohibit actions before they occur.
What Does Fraud in the Call Center Look Like?
In order to conduct three forms of fraud, fraudsters use call centers. These are as follows:
Takeovers of Accounts
Using phone calls to bank call centers, fraudsters may persuade the customer service representatives that they are the authorized user of a bank account. Once they obtain access to the account, they may take over the account and make changes that would prevent the genuine user from accessing it. For this sort of fraud, it is usual for fraudsters to undertake preliminary research on the account owner using social media or Google, in order to learn important information about them, such as their mother’s maiden name, birthdate, pet’s name, or any other personal information.
Theft of one’s identity
Identification theft becomes a severe concern when crucial personal information is obtained via fraudulent contact center encounters. Through the employment of contact center agents, fraudsters may get the information they want, which they can then use in other places to generate credit applications, make purchases, and engage in many other illegal actions. Following the theft of a device or the infiltration of an unprotected network connection, criminals often contact a person’s financial institution to get further personal information about them.
Fraud involving a card that is not present (CNP)
The completion of transactions online or over the phone has become commonplace in today’s society. Cards that are not present (i.e., not swiped through a machine) are being used by fraudsters to make transactions, and things are often processed and dispatched before the real cardholder is aware that their card has been compromised. Call centers are involved in the processing of transactions that are conducted over the phone.
Scammers’ initial goal, regardless of the sort of fraud or their intended victim, is to persuade a contact center employee that they are a legitimate client of the company. Once the agent is convinced that the caller is who they claim to be and has gained access to the account, they may do a variety of actions at the cost of the user they are impersonating.
For example, in the case of financial contact center fraud, fraudsters might request that bank account passwords be changed or that new credit or debit cards be issued to a new address while simultaneously deactivating any legitimate cards associated with a particular account. They can make an emotional plea by claiming that they have lost everything in a home fire and that they want a replacement card to be supplied to their hotel as soon as possible. Alternatively, they may claim to have misplaced their credit card while traveling and want a replacement to be sent to a different address than the one on file.
In other cases, the fraudster will have themself added as a secondary user to a customer’s account, which we have seen. This enables criminals to establish strong credit over time, which may lead to bust-out fraud schemes, a kind of fraud that is widespread among organized crime rings and costs financial institutions millions of dollars each year in losses.
The current efforts to reduce call center fraud are not sufficient.
To secure sensitive consumer data, several contact centers have already adopted security protocols to keep it safe. Knowledge-based authentication (KBA) is a technique that is often used to validate a user’s identification and provide access to agents to a user’s account. A typical KBA query involves personally identifiable information (PII), such as an individual’s address or birthdate.
The information included in these bits of data, on the other hand, may be readily accessed by fraudsters. Data breaches may expose sensitive bits of personally identifiable information (PII) and make them accessible on the dark web. Fraudsters are increasingly gaining access to user accounts using contact centers that are based on KBA technology.
How to Prevent Call Center Fraud Using DataVisor Software
A increasing menace, call center scams are predicted to cost financial institutions up to $775 million in damages by the end of 2020, according to industry estimates. Even with widely-used verification mechanisms such as KBA and PII, the surge in contact center scams demonstrates that combating these acts of fraud at the account level is not adequate in and of itself. Furthermore, many of these assaults are not isolated incidents, but rather well-coordinated schemes that need sophisticated pattern recognition to identify.
Modern security solutions, particularly those offered by companies like DataVisor, enable firms to harness omnichannel data, such as digital fingerprints and contact center records, to react to situations swiftly and effectively before fraudsters can complete their assaults on the company. In order to detect and reduce contact center frauds with fewer false positives, DataVisor uses its unique unsupervised machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). In this way, businesses may react to fraud concerns while still allowing genuine consumers to conduct their operations as usual.
It’s no laughing matter when it comes to call center fraud. Fraud is not just on the increase in call centers in general (up 350 percent from 2013 to 2019), but the growth of fraud in the middle of the COVID-19 epidemic requires companies and customers to be more vigilant than ever.
To successfully tackle contact center fraud, businesses must be prepared. Scammers have access to sensitive user data gained via illegal routes and are equipped with powerful technologies. Furthermore, unscrupulous callers may use automated systems and customer service employees to update account information, transfer money, and more.
Fortunately, there are methods for detecting incoming call fraud in real time, enabling agents to regain control over their clients’ security without affecting the entire customer experience. For example, speech analytics software allows contact centers to evaluate previous fraudulent calls, design a fraudulent scorecard, and use real-time analytics to give advise to employees on the phone if a call is detected as potentially fraudulent.
Download our white paper, Sitel + CallMiner Survey: Preventing Fraud and Preserving CX with AI, for more details on fraud prevention using speech analytics and AI.
Organizations can easily identify dangers like as fraud and harmful calls by recognizing key signs of fraud and malicious callers.
After reading the suggestions below, tell us: How can your firm protect itself against incoming phone fraud?
Inbound Call Fraud Indicators That Agents Can Recognize
1. Fraudulent callers may try to establish a connection with a certain agent.
“Fraudsters utilize a variety of techniques to deceive contact center operators and shop employees. Most people aren’t aware they’ve been a victim of fraud until it’s too late. Before demanding that a specific agent or retail associate pay a financial amount to their bank account, some scammers create a connection with them over time.
They employ flattery and name-dropping to induce terror, and they use flattery to develop trust. Other fraudsters phone claiming to be a client and gradually change passwords and make account adjustments over a few interactions so they have complete access before making large transactions. The strategy a fraudster takes is determined on the industry and the kind of calls you handle on a regular basis.” – Using Speech Analytics to Detect Fraud, @CallMiner, @CallMiner, @CallMiner, @CallMiner, @CallMiner
2. The caller is having trouble answering KBA questions.
“Knowledge-based authentication (KBA) is a security technique that asks end users to answer particular security questions in order to offer correct authorisation for online or digital activity.” The concept behind KBA is that computers may verify whether a user is the real owner of a password-protected area or not by asking questions that only the target person would know the answers to.” — Techopedia, Knowledge-Based Authentication (KBA); Twitter: @techopedia
3. The caller is unable to provide answers to queries about their business with your contact center.
“Replace the old knowledge verification procedure with a new one.” Don’t merely ask callers for their date of birth, postal address, or any other basic piece of information to identify themselves. Replacing these inquiries with ones that are particular to the individual’s business with your contact center is a better option. Use information that only the caller and the agent would have access to. You want to depend on account-specific expertise that isn’t accessible outside the company.” — Matt Grech, How to Stop Fraud in Call Centers, Call Center Fraud Prevention: How to Stop Fraud Finally and Forever, GetVoIP; @getvoipreviews on Twitter
4. Caller information does not match customer history.
“Historical data is critical, and agents should have access to transaction information, prior support contacts (across all channels) and how they were resolved, account balance notifications, payment reminders, and more.” This 360-degree visibility is the bedrock of real omnichannel service and the key to completely comprehending a customer’s journey. This knowledge not only gives the agent the context he or she needs to vet the person on the other end of the line, but it also makes for better customer service.” – John Cray, BAI; Twitter: @BAI Info; Beating thieves at call center fraud
5. The caller is angry and too demanding of procedural exceptions.
according to Jerry Silva, an analyst with International Data Corp., who stated that contact centers with banks and call center personnel fall subject to social engineering in an interview with Bank Info Security. This happens when agents end up circumventing regulations in order to appease “an irate client,” who is really a burglar seeking to gain sensitive personal data.” – Trisys; Twitter: @TrisysInc; Decrease Risk and Manage Fraud in Financial Call Centers
6. The caller refuses to verify their email account and insists on switching to a less secure service.
“Gmail accounts are simple to set up and may seem to be legitimate email accounts. If a client requests that forms or information be sent, it is best practice to validate the email address that the organization has on file and to send just that account. Replying to the fraudster’s email account merely adds to the fraudster’s plot. Verify the customer’s email address, and only send information to that address.” — Linn Foster Freedman, Lexology’s Call Center Fraud Threats; @lexology on Twitter
7. In a short period of time, the caller makes several requests to modify critical information.
“Our financial services customers claim that cross-channel fraud accounts for up to 30% of all fraud against consumer accounts. For example, fraudsters often start by socially engineering contact center operators to give over or modify important information, which they then exploit in subsequent online transactions to steal money from customers’ accounts.” – Avivah Litan, Forbes; Twitter: @forbes; Preventing Fraud in the Call Center with Phone Printing and Voice Biometrics
8. To get access to sensitive account information, the caller employs any known “social engineering” approach.
“The human element – the exact thing that attracts fraudsters to contact center fraud – may also be a financial institution’s first and most effective line of defense.” For instance, training on how to spot persons who are trying to “socially engineer” discussions in order to get information. – How Banks Can Put a Stop to the Growing Call Center Fraud Problem, Deluxe FS; @deluxecorp on Twitter
9. The caller makes an emotive plea to break usual practice.
“With financial contact center fraud, fraudsters might request that bank account passwords be changed or new credit or debit cards be delivered to a new address, all while deleting any legitimate cards attached to the account.” They can make an emotional plea, claiming that they’ve lost everything in a home fire and want a replacement card to be brought to their hotel as soon as possible. Or they may claim to have misplaced their credit card while abroad and want a replacement to be delivered to a different location than the one on file.” – Kevin Tu, DataVisor, How to Detect Call Center Fraud; Twitter: @datavisor
10. Scammers may find it difficult to keep up with queries that are posed in a conversational tone.
“Effective verification questions are vital, but although the answers are important, the manner in which they are replied is often much more affirming. Furthermore, building a connection with your consumer while unintentionally authenticating them can boost loyalty and customer lifetime value.” — Sam Bouso, Precognitive; Twitter: @precognitiveInc; Preventing Call Center Fraud Using Non-Conventional Verification Methods
11. The caller tries to manipulate the situation in order to receive preferential treatment.
“The use of deceit and manipulation to convince unsuspecting contact center personnel to give secret information that may be used to steal additional sensitive information, conduct fraud, or perform an unlawful transaction” is the fundamental definition of social engineering. — Identity Management Institute’s Call Center Employee Fraud Training; Twitter: @identitymate
12. Long pauses after being given questions might suggest a phony caller.
“Most individuals in the United States can readily recite their social security number when asked. If the caller stops, asks your representative to wait, or says that he or she forgot it as part of your verification procedure, this is a sign that things isn’t quite right.” – Call center fraud is on the increase; here’s how your credit union can stay safe. MAP; @mapcuso on Twitter
13. Scam callers may have a pattern of making many access attempts with incorrect information.
“By employing key indicator words, patterns and trends might develop – for example, a contact center can see that someone contacted eight times to register a new account, but the caller provides incorrect information when asked for something they should know.” — Michele Masterson, Smart Customer Service; Twitter: @smartcustserv; 3 Best Practices to Avoid Contact Center Fraud
14. Fraudulent callers may be unable to answer sensitive inquiries about a consumer.
“When a consumer phones a call center, customer care agents should be prepared to ask security questions that only authorized customers may answer.” This is why it’s critical to include questions that enable consumers to submit replies that are unique and relevant to them, as well as questions that are powerful enough to ensure data security.” — Mia Papanicolaou, Call Center Management, 5 Call Center Security Tips For Protecting Customer Data and Preventing Breaches; Twitter: @MonetSoftware
Inbound Call Fraud Indicators That Software Can Detect
15. Scammers may be deterred by real-time, multi-layered verification systems.
“The ability to complete the authentication process in real time using multi-layered verification techniques deters fraud while also making it simpler for genuine consumers to access or establish accounts,” says the company. — John Dancu, CUInsight; Twitter: @CUinsight, The continuous increase of contact center fraud
16. If two-factor verification is needed using an existing account phone number, scammers may give up.
“When a contact center employee receives a caller who wants to perform a transaction on a specific account, the account owner receives notification of the transaction through his mobile phone.” To complete the intended transaction, a consumer must input a code supplied to his or her cell phone. It’s effective because few fraudsters know how to overcome it, and doing so generally takes a long period and a lot of money.” — Anna Rodriguez, author MyCustomer; Twitter: @MyCustomer; Seven ways contact center managers may protect their organization against fraud
17. Scammers could try to get around knowledge-based authentication systems.
“On the front end, KBA deters fraudsters by employing multiple-choice questions to verify that someone is who they claim to be. What’s vital is to assess the back-end controls and procedures in order to avoid bad actors from deceiving the system.” – EVS; Twitter: @goevs; How to Prevent Fraud in Call Centers
18. The caller’s phone behavior or number is unusual for their area.
According to Vijay Balasubramaniyan, founder, CEO, and CTO of Pindrop Security, an in-depth examination at a phone number may also be valuable in spotting fraud. ‘An example of this is a phone number that is fully unallocated in the United States’ phone numbering network. ‘You’re seeing it appear despite the fact that it’s not a real phone number,’ he explains. ‘You may also look at the phone number’s velocity — how many times does it call over a period of time, and what are its calling patterns?’ — Jeff Goldman, eSecurity Planet, How to Prevent Contact Center Fraud; Twitter: @eSecurityP
19. Customer behavior seems to be out of the ordinary across channels.
“Today, a customer’s path to complete a single activity may entail many channels – for example, signing into an account, then a webchat, and finally a phone call.” Contact center activity may be fed into an analytics or even a rule-based fraud detection platform to detect fraud by identifying abnormalities for a specific client or in contrast to a peer group.” – Peter Mullen, VXI; Twitter: @vxiglobal; Preventing fraud at the contact center
20. Automated analysis of incoming calls and phone information fails.
“Enabling correct identification assessment in the contact center depends on endpoint-centric methods, which look at the originating call and the originating phone to check the authenticity of the individual calling.” “The strongest way for identifying fraudsters that call into organizations,” according to Litan, is the combination of phoneprinting technology and voice biometrics. – Gartner’s Analysis and Recommendations: Pindrop; Twitter: @pindrop; 3 Key Call Center Questions Answered
21. The caller’s device and access information are notably different than usual.
“Identity-based risk detection identifies patterns of an identity’s usage across a broad range of consumer activities in order to determine whether a particular identity is in the hands of fraudsters who are actively attempting to exploit it.” Monitoring the features of digital-identity proxies such mobile phone numbers and email contact information isolates incidents when fraudsters modify customer contact information to protect the victim from further verification efforts.” – Experian, call center fraud prevention; Twitter: @Experian US
The caller’s side of the Session Initiation Protocol for Telephones reveals questionable data.
“Fraudsters with a basic understanding of telephony may spoof the ANI, which stands for Automatic Number Identification and serves as a proxy for the phoning party’s phone number. The ANI value may be modified, but when it is, it leaves behind additional information that is incompatible with the new value, indicating spoofing.” – To identify call center fraud, sophisticated signaling is used. Twitter: @flowroute;
23. The multi-factor authentication procedure has baffled the caller.
“MFA, or multi-factor authentication, is a better option than KBA. The MFA employs a method that gives each caller their own unique identification token. This token is derived from the device and carrier information on your phone. Another benefit of MFA for businesses is that it can recognize the qualities of specific sounds and transform them into a voice print. After gathering all of this data, you may input it into a database. The machine then analyzes all of the data to send fraudsters to a database where they would be blacklisted from the company’s and consumers’ information.” — Ilsa Morales, United World Telecom, Authentication and Fraud Prevention in Call Centers
24. Scammers may be calling if they are unable to perform callback verification for key account changes and transactions.
“Out-of-band authentication” is a procedure that needs two signals from two distinct channels to get access to an account. Instead of one authentication channel, attackers would have to compromise two independent and unrelated ones. If you get an email from a vendor, for example, you should phone them at the number you have on file to confirm that they received the email. This is particularly true if they are providing you with fresh account details. For instance, you could be asked to pay money to a different account from the one you’ve previously used.” – Out-of-Band Authentication Is the Key to Preventing Wire Fraud, Bridge Bank; Twitter: @bridgebank
25. The caller does not pass the voice biometrics check.
“Voice Biometrics software uses a person’s unique voiceprint to identify them. Vocal biometrics technology is used to identify a person based on their voice patterns, similar to how everyone has a unique fingerprint or retina.” –
