What happened to fraud in the telecom industry? Are there still problems with telecom fraud? Do you as an owner of a business be worried? Despite the huge advancements in technology for security and increased telecommunication security protection and customer awareness fraud on the phone continues to pose a significant concern for all businesses. It's terrifying to imagine the possible cost of thousands to a business as a result of phone fraud. However, phone fraud still has the potential to make your business unfit for business , and that's an extremely scary prospect. Despite the advancement of VOIP technology, the thieves continue to find out how to hack even the most complicated systems and companies like yours and mine can still suffer as a result.
There are three main types of phone fraud that the majority of us should be concerned about and which will be dealt with in this piece. Nuisance fraud (cramming and slamming) as well as fraud on the proprietary phone system (PBX Key System, PBX) Voice mail fraud, and the most recent issue, fraud in VoIP phones.
Nuisance fraud business professionals are more likely to be a victim of nuisance fraud at one time or another. Also known as slammingor cramming, and other forms of fraud. Nuisance fraud usually cannot cause a business to fail when it occurs but it could drain revenue if not properly inspected on the phone bill.
Cramming happens when a third-party provider is charged for services or fees that the client has not authorized. These charges cannot be ordered or desired by your company. They can be a result of products and services such as bogus voice mail service charges operator assisted calls, call card services, monthly service charges and credit check services. Also, bogus yellow pages and white pages advertising may also show up on your business telephone bills or be charged to you directly.
Cramming is the act of the practice of adding charges to a subscriber's bill for services which were not requested or purchased by the client or fees for services and calls that weren't disclosed to the consumer. These charges are often assessed by untruthful third-party providers of communications and data services that telephone companies are required, by law, to allow the third-party to place on the bill.
Have you ever looked over your phone bill and see odd charges from "other service providers" which you're not familiar with? If you have, you're likely to find that you've seen a large amount of charges. Large businesses may have hidden charges on their bills that are difficult to spot. They can continue for a long time without anyone being conscious.
What can you do to stop cramming and get refunds? The first step is to contact the local telephone firm and request an inverse of the charges. phone reverse lookup can be reversed. If they don't cooperate with you, then make contact with the FCC, your better state attorney general and the FTC to make complaints. But first, inform the crammer that you would like give them an opportunity to return your money.
The possibility of slamming is when there is an unauthorized switch or change of a carrier providing local toll, local or long distance service. The problem is that dishonest phone companies can easily to alter or "pic" your long distance service to their plans, typically at a significantly higher rate than your preferred or selected carrier had provided. However, you must switch all your lines to the correct long distance service provider and receive a refund. What can you do to avoid it? Ask the carrier to put the "pic freeze" on your phone lines. If you want access to all your local, long-distance and cellular phone accounts, request the carrier to provide a corporate password. Limit access to these accounts to two employees.
The phone system is prone to fraud as well as voice mail kinds of frauds are still an issue for many businesses. They'll continue to be a problem as long as there are PBX and Key-type telephone systems. Long distance calls can be expensive and hackers have easy access. Proactive prevention of this type of fraud is a lot easier than repairing it after it's occurred and let's admit it, just like many criminals hackers are lazy, and are likely to leave your company alone and go someplace else provided that your system is protected by the necessary safeguards in place. First, ensure that the default passwords provided by your phone manufacturer for your phone are updated at the address you provide. Hackers are able to access these passwords and can steal your information easily if they are able. In fact, many of these master passwords (i.e. : Avaya, Siemens, Nortel, Mitel, Cisco) are available online and are accessible to anyone. Changes to passwords can be done by placing an inquiry with the company that maintains services your telephone systems.
Make sure the remote access to your phones is secured. This is usually accomplished through the use of security encryption technology to secure remote access to your systems. Also, ensure that your employees do not utilize passwords with easy names like "1111" to access their voice mail accounts. They can easily be hacked. Set your voice mail system to automatically prompt and ensure that employees change their passwords each 90 days at minimum. Make sure you remove all voicemails that have not been used by employees when they quit the company. Why? Hackers gain control over the voicemail mailbox and records "yes" The hacker then contacts an outside operator and makes a call to a third party. The operator asks if you're willing to pay for third-party calls to cover Mr. Jones' calls. The voice mail box responds, "yes", as programed.
Today, companies face a different threat from weak links in their staff, specifically the receptionist at the company. It is commonly referred to as "social engineering fraud". Your receptionist and employees should be on guard for calls that is received whereby the caller may identify themselves as someone working for the company that is conducting tests on lines. The caller could state, "I'm with the phone company and I'm conducting tests on your phone systems, please transfer me to a specific extension." To forward a caller's number to an exact number, first dial 9 to access the outside line. "Dialing the 0" will access the operator, who is able to make a call from anywhere in the world. The calls are then charged to your business. Hackers can also use other techniques, like identifying the board members of large companies and impersonating them on calls made to your company. Because board members rarely interact with receptionists as often as employees, it's possible for the receptionist to not be able to recognize their voice. The power of a board member means receptionists have the ability to transfer unlimitable amounts to callers. The crime usually is not identified until after the receipt of the bill. Inform the employees and receptionists of this scheme. This ploy was employed by many companies to make hundreds of dollars through international calls.
If your company has a toll free inbound number be aware! Hackers could dial the toll free number and make use of codes and features to place calls from overseas or to ring up service charges on paid-calling services.
You must also limit conference and call forwarding features on the phone system of your business. This will prevent hackers from forwarding your calls for you. To ensure that your phone system's security, meet with your provider of phone systems to conduct a vulnerability evaluation. A lot of the top telephone equipment manufacturers, including Siemens, Nortel, Nortel Mitel, and Mitel, have security bulletins to assist in keeping your system secure.
VoIP fraud Third and last telecom voice fraud issue to be discussed is the latest threat to businesses and it is VOIP fraud. Although voice over IP fraud is not yet fully established, it is becoming more widespread. As discussed in the previous section regarding phone system fraud, one of the most effective ways to stop this kind of fraud is to change the system passwords on your VoIP phone system.
There is a growing need for more attention paid to recent attacks on VOIP systems but actual cases of fraud that have been documented are just beginning to emerge as an issue. Two individuals were detained in 2007 after they routed calls through an unprotected network ports at other companies in order to transfer them to providers. Over the course of three weeks the two men routed nearly 1 million phone calls to a VoIP provider. Federal investigators think the two perpetrators earned up to $1 million from the scam. Nevertheless, actual cases of VOIP fraud on these systems are uncommon, but there is plenty of potential harm as vulnerabilities and holes in security are becoming prevalent and more easily exploitable by resourceful hackers.
VoIP hackers can exploit passwords in corporate systems in order to access voice systems. They can also steal millions of minutes of long distance service. How? Hackers study the security bulletins of VOIP vendors and obtain public information on company IP addresses that are posted online, which permits them to gain access to client systems. Hackers create and use customized software to decipher access codes, access gateways and data ports and even attack computer systems. Hackers are able to use default or poorly chosen passwords.
To counteract these attacks on your company , and to stay abreast with the latest security technology and VOIP fraud prevention guidelines for your VOIP equipment providers and ask them specific questions about the best ways to safeguard your system. If you have a large VOIP system, it could make sense for you to engage a professional to conduct a security audit on your system. IP business users and IT administrators must use the latest encryption techniques for their network access as well as train and monitor their employees in the effective protection of company data as well as IP system details.
The best method to know if a telecom fraud is being committed on an organization is to conduct an extensive audit of telecommunications and a complete phone system review.