Analyst Report Outlines How Phone Number Data Can be Used for Fraud Mitigation and Risk Assessment

• What’s the News: Black Swan Telecom Journal explores how leveraging phone number information can provide critical information for businesses to better assess risk, mitigate fraud and protect both their business and their customers.
• Why it Matters: The phone number is one of the top personal identifiers that consumers use to register for products and services making it an attractive target for identity thieves. Companies can now use phone number porting data as part of their fraud mitigation and risk assessment strategies. 
• Who’s it for: Telecom operators, large enterprises, identity aggregators, credit bureaus and service providers.

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. – May 27, 2020 – The phone number provides invaluable information for businesses to better assess risk, mitigate fraud and protect both their business and their customers.  A new report in Black Swan Telecom Journal explains how leveraging that critical information has never been easier—and outlines how credit and other service bureaus are using it to help combat fraud. Part of the journal’s Black Swan Solution Guides, the report is the first of several papers that demonstrate how iconectiv is collaborating with service providers and the broader telecom ecosystem to improve telecom and digital identity fraud strategies through authoritative number intelligence.

In Getting Porting History Carrier Data to Verify Identity & Mitigate Account Takeovers, Kathy Timko, iconectiv’s Head of Local Number Portability Administration (LNPA), discusses PortData Validate, a numbering intelligence service that allows companies that assess risk and mitigate fraud to use phone number porting data in their risk evaluation. In addition to discussing the uses of PortData Validate in identity risk, measuring credit risk and identifying the account’s credit status, she covers:

• The value of knowing the current service provider to determine if a phone number has changed or if the account has remained constant
• How fraudsters exploit phone number porting for account takeovers and can quickly gain control of an identity
• Why immediate access to porting history and the carrier of record (CoR) is considered essential for many identity aggregators
• How PortData Validate is integrated into back office systems via either a subscription or query-on-demand service

“Mobile phone numbers now rival social security and driver license numbers as the personal identifier that consumers use to register for products and services in the United States, making mobile phone numbers an attractive and powerful tool for identity thieves,” Timko says. “PortData Validate’s value comes from the powerful combination of having the latest phone number porting history and authoritative knowledge of who the service provider of record is, so issuing financial companies can quickly be contacted for more information or be presented with ‘red’ flags to indicate possible risk or fraud.”

“The smartphone is the mostly widely used physical device identifying a particular person, and criminals—recognizing the smartphone’s central role in identity—are eager to exploit the phone number porting or carrier switching mechanism to commit fraud and takeover accounts,” says Dan Baker, Research Director of TRI and Editor of Black Swan Telecom Journal. “Checking on the security and stability of the smartphone account is now considered critical by enterprises and identity aggregators in banking, e-commerce, insurance, healthcare, and many other industries.”

You can learn more about PortData Validate on the iconectiv website and read the full report here.