The Pulse

Robocalls harm consumers every day. They also harm consumer confidence in voice calls, which hampers the ability of companies to reach customers on the phone. With the rise in unwanted robocalls, 71% of consumers said they stopped answering their phone completely. In 2021, a missing hiker, lost in the mountains of Colorado, ignored repeated calls from rescuers because the calls came from an unrecognized number. While the hiker ultimately found safety, he could have been rescued earlier if he…

To avoid consumer frustration of waiting on hold for a long time, many retailers, government agencies and other organizations provide people with the option of leaving a callback number instead of staying on hold. The catch is that callbacks also enable fraudsters, who leave International Premium Rate Numbers (IPRNs), to take advantage of a retailers’ customer-first approach.

The Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs (SHAKEN) framework helps mitigate illegal robocalls and helps consumers once again trust the number displayed on their caller ID. The catch is that legitimate calls from outside the U.S. are at risk of being caught in SHAKEN’s net.

With PortData Validate organizations such as financial institutions, healthcare providers, insurance companies and identity aggregators can be authorized to access number porting data for fraud mitigation. This helps companies in their efforts to guard against account takeover or assess risk before confirming a transaction.