For our latest phone fraud report, Pindrop Labs analyzed millions of calls to enterprise call centers across several industries to learn about techniques used by phone fraud attackers today. Below are the most common detectable phone fraud tactics:
- Spoofing –Falsifying the originating phone number by spoofing the Automation Number Identification (ANI) is used to impersonate an account owner or to hide a suspicious originating number. Spoofing is cheap or free, and easy to use. If we analyze the audio of a call to determine it’s geographic origin, and that information does not match the Caller ID, we can be sure that the caller is using spoofing technology, and is a likely attacker.
- Voice Distortion – Attackers often alter their own voice by using accents, lowering/raising vocal range, changing language or using distortion technology. In doing so, they can impersonate a legitimate customer, even a customer of another gender.
- Voice Over IP (VoIP) – VoIP has minimized or eliminated the cost of phone calls, both domestic and international. There is evidence to suggest that VoIP service is easier to steal than other kinds of telephony services as well. Attackers take advantage of cheap, free, and stolen VoIP, using it at a much higher rate than the general public. They use VoIP lines for 53 percent of their calls, compared to 7.8 percent of the general public.
- International Calling – 64 percent of fraud calls originate in a country other than the country of the attack target. They rely on international attacks in part because it complicates the legal system. It is difficult to track phone fraud attacks in general. Once law enforcement has to start working across borders, the process becomes nearly impossible.
To learn more about phone fraud, download a free copy of the 2015 State of Phone Fraud Report.
