Communication security

HOLD THE PHONE! THE THREATS LURKING BEHIND A MISSED CALL AND OTHER FORMS OF TELECOM FRAUD

The most common methods can be broken into different categories ranging from crude to highly sophisticated scams:

• Vishing calls. Vishing (a combination of the words Voice and Phishing) is a phone scam in which fraudsters trick victims into divulging their personal, financial or security information or into transferring money to them.
• One (ring) and cut or Wangiri -Japanese for ‘one ring and drop the call’ – is a telephone scam where criminals trick victims into calling premium rate numbers. A fraudster will set up a system to dial a large number of random phone numbers. Each call rings just once then hangs up, leaving a missed call on the recipients’ phones. Users often see the missed call and, believing it to be legitimate, call the premium rate number back.
• International Revenue Sharing Fraud (IRSF) has been the most damaging fraud scheme to date. It involves transferring monetary value from one carrier to another, based on the inter-carrier trust between telecom operators. Patient fraudsters wait for the logs to expire before executing any further money laundering steps.