We recently worked with a customer that was being billed a high level of surcharges as a victim of Origin Based Rating (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 on the order of $2.6Billion.
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, the majority 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
