What happened to fraud in the telecom industry? Are there still problems with telecom fraud? Should you as an owner of a company be concerned? Phone fraud is a problem to all companies, despite the advancements in technology for security. The mere notion of thousands of losses to a business because of phone fraud is daunting. The threat of phone fraud is still a source of financial damage to your business. This is a scary thought. Even with the advent of VOIP technology, thieves continue to discover how to hack even the most complex systems. Companies like mine and yours could continue to suffer from this. Three main kinds of phone fraud ought to concern most people. The article below will discuss the three types of phone fraud. Nuisance fraud (cramming, slamming), fraud in the telephone system owned by the company (PBX, key system) and voice mail fraud and, the newest problem, fraud on VoIP phones. Nuisance fraud business professionals are more likely to be a victim of nuisance fraud at one point or another. Also called slamming, scrambling, and other types of fraud. The majority of the time, nuisance fraud will not be a major factor in a company's success in the event that it happens, but it can drain revenue if not properly inspected in the telephone bill. Cramming occurs when a third-party provider charges fees or services that the client hasn't been authorized to pay for. These charges aren't ordered or requested by your business. They could be for services like bogus voicemail service charges, operator-assisted calls as well as calling program programs monthly charges, credit check services, and monthly service charges. Also, bogus yellow pages and white pages advertisements can show up on your business telephone bills or be billed directly to you. Cramming refers to the practice of adding charges to a subscriber's bill for services which were not requested or purchased by the customer or for fees for services or calls which were not made clear to the customer. 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 at your local phone bill and seen odd costs from other service providers that you aren't familiar with? Chances are you have been scammed. Large companies may conceal costs in their invoices that are hard to see. They can continue for years , without anyone aware. What are the best ways to obtain refunds and combat cramming? First, contact your local phone firm and request a reversal of the charges. Most cases can be reversed. If you want to file a complaint against them, you can contact the FCC or the FTC or your state attorney general. However, first let the crammer know that you'd like to give them the chance to refund the money you paid. Slamming is when cell phone provides local, long distance or local toll services and an unauthorized switch or alteration. phone reverse lookup can be very frustrating since fraudulent phone companies could easily change or pick your long-distance service to their plans at a more expensive price than the one that you had selected. After you have discovered the scam, there's an issue of switching all of your lines to the long distance service you should have and getting the fraudulent company to issue you a refund. How can you avoid this? Ask the carrier to put a pic freeze on your phone lines. Make sure you have the use of a corporate password to gain access on your accounts for local, cellular and long distance phone accounts and limit access to these accounts to two important individuals in your business. Frauds within the phone system as well as voice mail types of frauds are still a problem for many companies. They'll continue to be a problem as long as there are PBX and Key-type telephone systems. Long distance calls can be costly and hackers can gain access to. phone number 's much easier to stop these kinds of crimes than to fix it once it's occurred. Let's face the truth hackers, as with the rest of criminals, are lazy. They'll leave your business and move on to another one if you don't have the proper safeguards. First, make sure that your phone system's manufacturer has provided master default passwords for your voicemail and phone systems are changed when you change your place of residence. Hackers have access to these passwords and can hack your system easily should they be able. In fact, many of these master passwords (i.e. Many of the master passwords (i.e. call phone , Nortel Mitel, Cisco, Mitel, Mitel and Mitel) can be found on the internet. A password change can be accomplished by making an inquiry with the company responsible for maintaining services to your telephone systems. Additionally, ensure that your remote access to your phone systems are secured. Access to your phone system remotely could be secured with security encryption technology. Also, ensure that your employees don't use easy passwords like 1111 to access their voice mail boxes. These passwords are easily stolen. Make sure you set your voice mail system to auto remind employees to change their passwords every 90 days or so. When employees leave the business, ensure that you delete the voicemails they have not used as soon as you can. Why? The hacker takes control of the voicemail box and records the word yes. The hacker then assigns an outside party in charge and instructs the outside operator to call the number of your deceased employee's old mailbox. The operator asks, do you agree to pay third party fees for Mr. Jones' call and the voice mail box responds, yes as programmed. Another major threat to companies present day is the issue of weak links in employees, specifically receptionists at companies. This is sometimes referred to as social engineering fraud. Receptionists and employees must be on guard for calls that is received whereby someone could identify themselves as an employee of the phone company conducting tests on lines. It is possible to hear them speak to you I'm with your company and I'm running tests on your telephone systems. Transfer me to a particular extension. Transferring a person to certain digits first accesses an outside telephone line dialing 9 and dialing the number 0 opens the line to an outside operator who can facilitate calls to any location in the world to the crooks. The calls are later being billed to your business. browse this site have also been known to use other ploys like finding out who the directors of large corporations are and impersonating them on a call to that company. The receptionist may not be able to identify their voice, as typically board members do not interact with receptionists in the same way employees do. But, because of the prestige of a board member's power or reputation in the organization, receptionists are aware of their power, which is why the perpetrator can gain unlimited transfer power to commit crimes. The crime is usually not found until the time of the payment of the phone bill. This scam should be disclosed to the employees and receptionists. Numerous companies milked for thousands of dollars from overseas calls as a result of this fraud. Keep reverse phone lookup out for a toll-free number that your business could use to make inbound calls. Hackers are able to call the toll free number and use codes and features to place calls overseas or ring up service charges on paid-calling services. Another thing you should do is to limit certain conference and call forwarding features on your business phone system that might assist hackers in forwarding calls to your account. To ensure your phone system's security, talk to your vendor of phone systems to conduct a vulnerability evaluation. Many of the largest phone equipment manufacturers, Siemens, Avaya, Nortel and Mitel have security bulletins and security support programs to help keep your systems secure and up to date. VoIP fraud the third and final concern regarding telecom voice fraud to be discussed is the most recent threat to companies and that is fraud through VOIP. While fraud involving voice over IP isn't yet widely known, it is becoming more widespread. As we have previously mentioned in the section about phone system fraud, changing the passwords of your system in the VOIP phone system is among the most effective ways to stop this kind of fraud. There is starting to be more attention paid to recent hacks on VOIP systems, however actual instances of fraud that have been documented are just starting to become problematic. check here were arrested in 2007 for routing calls through unprotected network port at other companies in order to transfer them to providers. In the span of three weeks, two men routed nearly a million phone calls to a VOIP service. check here believe the two made up to $1 million from the fraud. While actual instances of fraud involving VOIPs are uncommon but it is possible to cause severe damage through exploiting security gaps and vulnerabilities that are becoming more prevalent. VoIP hackers are able to hack into passwords on systems to gain access to company VoIP systems and the potential to take millions of minutes of long distance. How? How? Hackers design and implement custom software codes to crack access codes, access gateways and ports for data, and attack computer systems. Hackers are able to access default or badly picked passwords. They can be thwarted and you must stay current with the latest technologies for security and fraud prevention tips. Contact your VOIP equipment providers to obtain specific information regarding the best method to secure your system. If you own a huge VOIP system, it may be beneficial to hire a professional to conduct a security audit on your system. The latest encryption techniques are essential for IP business users and IT managers. They also need to ensure that employees are trained and monitored in order to ensure the effective security of the company's data. The most effective way to find out whether a fraud in the telecom industry is being committed against an organization is to do an extensive audit of telecommunications and a complete phone system review.
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