Category: Vishing

Carriers are beginning to roll out new tools to help consumers identify and block fraud calls and spam calls. AT&T on Wednesday released a new app known as Call Protect that provides automatic blocking of fraud calls and also can warn users about other potentially unwanted calls. The new service is available on iOS and…

When discussing financial fraud, people often talk about it as one overarching problem. But the reality is that in today’s environment, fraud comprises many separate, distinct components, each with its own techniques, complexities, and challenges for organizations trying to defend against them. Customers interact with their financial institutions in a variety of ways: in person,…

Fraudsters are always looking for new ways to empty the wallets of their victims, and scammers in the U.K. recently have hit on a novel phone fraud technique that preys on people’s fear of other phone fraud scams. The new tactic involves scammers calling up potential victims and offering them a subscription service that will…

As voice has continued to emerge as one of the key interfaces for new devices and apps, including vehicles, bank accounts, and home automation systems, concerns about the security of these systems have evolved, as well. Now, as both Google and Adobe have demonstrated systems that can insert and replace words in recorded speech or mimic human…

The Carbanak gang, one of the more successful and prolific cybercrime groups at work today, is using a new tactic to get its malware onto target networks: calls to customer service representatives at hotels that convince victims to open malicious attachments. The technique is a simple one but has proven to be quite effective. Rather…

Three weeks after authorities in India disrupted a major phone fraud ring in Mumbai, the Department of Justice has indicted 61 people in relation to the scam, which officials say generated as much as $150,000 per day. The indictments are the result of investigations involving U.S. and Indian authorities and the phone fraud scheme affected tens…

With the release of its initial report to the FCC yesterday, the Robocall Strike Force laid out plans to implement technical and policy solutions to address the robocall problem, including a Do Not Originate List and more sophisticated traceback techniques. But consumer advocates say that these ideas, while good, aren’t enough to address the problem…

An industry led strike force is preparing to take away one of the most valuable pieces of technology used by phone scammers: caller ID spoofing. The Robocall Strike Force, convened by the FCC and comprising wired and wireline telecom companies, has been working since August on a handful of new technologies, standards, and other techniques to…

The FTC has shut down a phone fraud scam that involved scammers calling consumers–mostly elderly and on fixed incomes–and pressuring them to invest in web sites that supposedly had ties to large companies, promising quick returns. The scheme allegedly netted the scammers more than $9 million. The scheme involved six companies that the FTC alleges were…

Authorities in the Indian city of Mumbai say that a large phone fraud ring was operating in the city for more than a year, running the IRS tax scam and stealing as much as $150,000 per day from victims, mainly in the United States. Police in Mumbai this week conducted raids on nine call centers…