GSMA Introduces System to Tackle Fraudulent Phone Calls

The GSM Association (GSMA) said it is expanding its fraud prevention service portfolio, which will enhance the telecoms industry’s capacity to combat robocalling and other unwanted or fraudulent calls.

Together with technology partner Mobileum, GSMA has developed a new international fraud deterrent system, launched today at MWC21 as a proof-of-concept model.

GSMA now invites the global telecoms industry to trial the model.

The invitation is open for a range of global telecoms stakeholders to participate, including mobile and fixed carriers, voice over IP operators, voice and signalling wholesalers around the world. The aim of the trial is to evaluate advanced collaborative fraud and nuisance call prevention techniques.

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“The US Federal Communications Commission recently said fraudulent robocall schemes costs American about $10 billion annually, with most perpetrators operating overseas. It’s a challenge faced by citizens globally, which is why we’re calling on telecom operators – mobile, fixed-line, internet-based and wholesalers – to share their insights and experience so we can together locate and mitigate these sources of fraudulent activity,” said Alex Sinclair, GSMA CTO.

The joint initiative will trial a series of tools using real fraud incidents, which will help limit a wide variety of fraudulent and nuisance calls. These include: Case handling – allowing multiple networks to work on a problem: Call path tracing – to find the source of a call when that source is disguised; Live threat monitoring and alerts – providing a real time view and warnings about active fraud campaigns; Network identifier address book – providing an authenticated list of network identifiers; and Call validation – to confirm the provenance of a call.

Rui Paiva, Chief of Risk Management business at Mobileum said, “By combining the industry’s collective intelligence and locally based information with our latest technology, we can deliver game-changing support to tackle fraud,” said “Our cloud-native platform provides the necessary tools to make a material difference, delivering the results and improvements everybody wants.”