Bercu also adds that different operators work with different analytics services to identify suspicious call activity. This can create situations where, as trends in robocalling techniques evolve and spammers use different strategies to reject calls across international networks, some analytics services may be better at picking up certain behavior than others.
Berku is also executive director of the Industry Traceback Group, a neutral organization to USTelecom designated by the Federal Communications Commission to promote intelligence sharing to trace the source of illegal robocalls and promote cooperation among carriers. The idea is to see how robocalls circumvent existing technical defenses, identify networks where those defenses are not fully implemented, and work with providers to adopt stronger safeguards.
Ultimately, however, DarkTower’s Warner says that as with other digital crime industries like email spam, business email compromise and even ransomware, the key to curbing robocalls is making it difficult for fraudsters to operate at every level of their business. That means making it harder for them to route their calls, but also harder to hire call agents and buy lead lists—curated collections that claim to contain the phone numbers of targets like the elderly or people with disabilities. medical problems.
It also means targeting spammers’ money laundering methods. The financial industry has already done some work in this area by flagging potentially suspicious gift cards, but fraudsters have found ways around this simply by requiring victims to send them a photo of their gift card receipt along with the card number itself . That way, they can submit claims that appear to show that they legitimately purchased and own the gift card. However, this takes time and fraudsters have also developed laundering techniques where they rely on networks of money mules in the US or wherever they operate and have mules open checking accounts where victims can transfer money. They then quickly move money out of accounts using apps like Zelle, Venmo, or the Cash App.
“The key is to get more people to understand the problem, who can deny infrastructure to these actors, such as communication platforms, financial institutions, telcos, all together,” says Warner. “Denying criminals the ability to communicate and coordinate — I think that’s probably our most effective way forward.”
He also adds that while the Indian government has struggled to meaningfully address the problem, Indian law enforcement agencies have significantly increased arrests related to illegal call centers. But even arresting more than a dozen people a week will not curb the problem when there are believed to be tens of thousands of people operating illegal robocall scams in India alone.
YouMail, the blocking company that has reported estimated robocall volumes in the U.S. for years, found that Americans received just under 4 billion robocalls in May, down from 4.74 billion in May 2019. Overall, the company’s statistics highlight both the improvement in the overall volume of automated calls and the reality that the numbers are still extremely high.
“The only way we could guarantee that we would never get robocalls would be to have no phone calls at all,” says USTelecom’s Berku. “When you can receive calls, you open up your network to someone else. That’s why I increasingly like to think about the problem the same way you would think about other cybersecurity problems. Every supplier needs to do their due diligence and we need accountability but also cooperation.”
