Category: Phone Fraud

The FTC is supporting the efforts of the FCC to expand the definition of what constitutes and illegal call and make life more difficult for telemarketers and robocall operators. In comments sent to the FCC this week, the FTC said that a proposed rule that would allow the establishment of a broad Do Not Originate…

Police in the U.K. have arrested four people in connection with a fake tech support scam in which callers passed themselves off as representatives of Microsoft or other technology companies. Two men and two women were arrested as part of the investigation by City of London Police and Microsoft into the scheme, which has been…

The FCC has proposed a $120 million fine for a Florida man who the commission alleges made nearly 100 million illegal robocalls in a three-month period, some of which hit a paging network used by hospitals, EMTs, and doctors, disrupting its service. The investigation into the robocall operation began last year after the FCC received a…

Although tax season has been over for two months now, phone scammers are continuing to target victims with a new version of the venerable IRS phone fraud scam, using the agency’s electronic payment system as a lure. The latest iteration of the scheme involves scammers calling victims and trying to bully them into paying imaginary…

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…