Category: Phone Fraud

The FTC has reached settlements with two people and companies who the commission alleges were using fake pop-up ads and persuasive phone tactics to run a fake tech support scam. The settlement includes a fine of more than $800,000 and a permanent ban on any of the defendants engaging in similar schemes. This settlement is the resolution…

The FTC has gotten a default judgment against a California man who ran several companies that the commission alleges made billions of illegal robocalls, many of them to people who were on the Do Not Call list. The judgment includes a $2.7 million fine for Aaron Michael Jones, the man who the FTC says ran the…

Federal regulators are working on various methods to block robocalls, both to landlines and to mobile phones, with varying degrees of success. As those technologies make their way into the marketplace, some companies now are looking for clearance from the FCC to deliver their messages directly to customers’ voicemails without ringing their phones. The commission is considering…

Some attackers have taken to using a new phone bot for the Discord chat and voice app to send large numbers of harassing and nuisance calls to individual victims, retailers, and even law enforcement agencies. Known as Phonecord, the bot is being used in a number of different ways. But unlike most other phone-based campaigns, the…

Carriers that have tested one of the more promising methods for blocking robocalls–known as a Do Not Originate list–say that the system is effective, but should only be used in narrow, carefully selected circumstances to prevent false positives and stop fraudsters from moving to legitimate numbers. The idea behind the DNO list concept is to define…

Criminals are targeting corporate call centers at an unprecedented rate, resulting in a 113 percent spike in the fraud rate in the last year, new data compiled by Pindrop shows. Phone fraud has become one of the favored tactics for criminals as they look for less-risky and more-profitable avenues to get into targeted organizations. The phone…

By Jonah Berg-Ganzarain A pair of doctoral students and their advisor, looking for insights into the inner workings of tech support scams, spent eight months collecting data on and studying the tactics and infrastructure of the scammers, using a purpose-built tool. What they uncovered is a complex, technically sophisticated ecosystem supported by malvertising and victimizing people around…

The FTC has shut down a phone and email scam that involved scammers contacting consumers, falsely claiming to be working on behalf of the FTC and offering fake tech support services. The scheme is a twist on the old Windows tech support scam in which fraudsters call consumers and try to sell remote tech support…

The call center has become a key entry point into many organizations for fraudsters and cybercriminals, and enterprises have discovered that protecting that channel is not the same as defending a corporate network. The phone channel has its own unique traits and peculiarities that make it a challenge for security teams, particularly the involvement of humans…

Phone scammers have adopted a new tactic recently that is part of a long-term scheme to impersonate victims during calls with banks or other financial institutions. The new technique involves a scammer calling a victim and when the victim answers, immediately asking, “Can you hear me?” The idea is to record the victim’s voice as…