Blog

SMS Scams over the Holidays: Ready, Set, GO.

In the last year, global e-commerce has jumped to over $26.7 trillion, accelerated by COVID-19 according to United Nations UN News. It all sounds like great news for the economy, however fraudsters are following this upward trend and adapting their scams.

With the holidays and gift giving season approaching, more online shopping and package deliveries for consumers also means more opportunities for scammers to get information.

 

What is SMS Phishing?

SMS Phishing (also known as Smishing) is the act of committing text message fraud to try to lure victims into revealing account information or installing malware. Similar to Phishing, cybercriminals use SMS Phishing in an attempt to steal credit card details or other sensitive information, by disguising as a trustworthy organization. SMS Phishing has grown in popularity with cybercriminals now that smartphones are widely used, as it enables them to steal sensitive financial and personal information without having to break through the security defenses of a computer or network while also attracting considerably higher open rates than email. According to MobileMarketer.com, while email recipients only open about 20% of their messages, SMS recipients open 98% of their texts.

“On a small screen and with a limited ability to vet links and attachments before clicking on them, consumers and business users are exposed to more phishing risks than ever before,” says IDC’s Phil Hochmuth.

Examples of SMS Phishing

• Fake shipping notifications: Many delivery scams start with a text message about delivering a package to your address, according to the Better Business Bureau. These messages often include a “tracking link” that you are urged to click in order to update your delivery or payment preferences.
• Phony bank account balance warnings: A link to a website prompting for a bank account number or PIN of a debit card.
• Fake text from the IRS or Power company: Saying you owe unpaid taxes and that the IRS will arrest you if you don’t pay now via a link.
• Fake Prize notifications: Requesting personal information to deliver the reward.
• Bogus Covid-19 contact tracing messages: Requesting Personal information.

Combating the threat of fraudsters

Companies are aggressively looking for ways, including authentication and fraud detection solutions, to simultaneously streamline authentication and strengthen security. A “State of Intelligent Authentication and Fraud Prevention 2021” survey conducted by Opus Research revealed that “customer authentication [across all channels] has a direct impact on fraud detection and fraud prevention,” with a rare 100% of respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement.

Clearly, decision makers are coming around to acknowledging the link between strong authentication and fraud-loss prevention. When asked about which authentication and fraud detection methods they use, organizations report a wide range of strategies and factors (graph below).

 

While PINs/Passwords are still the most common factor in use, respondents also incorporate other factors including out-of-band delivery of one-time-passwords, knowledge-based authentication via security questions and voice biometrics.

How to Protect yourself: Tips for Identifying Scammers

1. Do your research to double check the details. If you get an unexpected sms text from a delivery company, or bank, look up the bank, agency or organization and get in touch directly, without using any contact information in the SMS text.
2. Claim a prize: No legitimate lottery, sweepstakes, or business will ask you to pay to claim a prize or ask for your bank details to deposit your “cash prize”.
3. Beware of urgent texts: “Attention. Fraudulent activity has been detected on your account. Act Now.” Scammers often create a sense of urgency to bypass your better instincts. Take your time and ask questions to avoid being rushed into a bad situation.
4. Refund owing to you from a retailer: Notifications involving money owed “Our records show that you overpaid for (a product or service). Kindly supply your bank routing and account number to receive your refund.” Again, don’t click on the link, check with the source.
5. Never verify passwords via a text: Any text that attempts to verify your Apple ID / Amazon account / Bank account is suspicious.

What can you do if you receive these messages:

• Report spam texts to the FCC and your carrier—Report as junk or spam. You can also contact your cell phone carrier to report as spam and file a report with the Federal Trade Commission at ftc.gov/complaint.
• Stay alert—Don’t click on any links, as they can install malware on your device, which collects your personal information.
• Ignore spam text—Directly replying to a spam text message lets a spammer know that your number is genuine. What happens next? They can sell your phone number to other spammers who might bombard you with promises of free gifts and product offers.

Finally, keep in mind fraudsters are continuously evolving and adapting their strategies, so most of all, be aware and be safe, especially this holiday shopping season.

 

STIR/SHAKEN and Robocalls

The STIR/SHAKEN framework has been the talk of the North American telecoms town over the past few years, but what is it, how does it impact your business, and how can you make sure your business’s communications conform to this framework?

STIR/SHAKEN stands for Secure Telephone Identity Revisited/Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs – you can see why an acronym was needed! It’s up and running in the USA, and will soon be live in Canada. Other countries are also considering its adoption.

This latest podcast breaks this down further, looking at how this mechanism enables the person receiving the call to judge the validity of the caller ID.

 

7 Reasons to implement Cloud based Voice Biometric today

What is Voice Biometric Authentication?

From privacy and security, to ease of use and savings. Discover how your business can benefit from cloud based voice biometrics.

Voice Biometrics characterises a person's voice for use in Speaker Verification - an application of AI-based voice technology that uses a voice imprint to authenticate or confirm an individual’s identity. Various vocal features and attributes such as pronunciation, pitch, tone, dialect, and style of speech all contribute to our vocal identity and allow verification / authentication for users. This process is extremely fast (think tens of milliseconds), needing only a couple of seconds of speech to store the voiceprint. That is why it is already used in many systems and services that have become an integral part of our daily routines, such as Google Voice, Amazon Alexa, and other virtual assistants.

Here are 7 reasons why your organisation should implement cloud-based Voice Biometrics technology today.

1. Fighting Fraud

Voice biometric systems operate on hundreds or even thousands of features of the human voice, making verification highly accurate, and a powerful tool in fighting fraud. Adding voice biometric technology not only reduces the risk of fraud by identifying the customer unambiguously, but also protects victims of fraud and impersonations, the customers themselves. Call centers today, with the help of voice biometrics, are already building real-time databases of “blacklisted voiceprints” as a security measure.

2. Security

The traditional verification methods like password or PIN can be easily tracked or hacked, while the voice of an individual can be as distinctive and unique as the fingerprints captured by many computer systems. That’s why Voice Biometrics are being implemented in large scale applications such as remote banking, government e-services and healthcare. Groundbreaking advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the science of Big Data, give Voice Biometrics the ability to identify a speaker, rapidly and reliably. Voice Biometric APIs, such as VoiSentry’s, enable developers to add enhanced security and convenience of biometric voice authentication to their customer contact applications.

3. Privacy & Engagement

Voice Biometrics keeps the privacy of users intact, and the end-users engaged.

With other authentication methods, simple PINs or passwords are usually supplemented with personal information such as mother’s maiden name, date of birth, or a pet’s name. But many end-users are reluctant to share such information with more than a few services – they quite rightly believe that doing so makes their accounts far more vulnerable to attack, because once one such service has been breached, an attacker will have easy access to all the other services.

What’s more, some of this information can be inconvenient to use – it can be forgotten, or sometimes expressed or spelled out in different ways (different capitalisation, optional punctuation marks, etc.) – causing confusion and delays in accessing services or systems.

Whatever the reason, simple knowledge-based authentication makes for an experience that is tedious and uncomfortable for users. The key is to find methods of authentication and verification that are effective, accurate, and easy for customer engagement. Voice Biometrics is often the only feasible method to achieve all these aims simultaneously.

4. Operational Cost Savings

Several use cases for voice biometric authentication show immense operational cost savings including Contact and Call Centers that are traditionally agent-assisted. With voice biometrics, the customer is identified, authenticated and routed to the appropriate call flow via IVR for processing their request, without any human interaction. Voice Biometrics reduces the average authentication time by up to 80%, which also frees up the agents, meaning they can be more engaged in focusing on other complex issues without compromising the customer experience.

5. Ease of Use

Voice Biometrics is a win-win for users. Rather than customers memorizing their passwords or keeping them saved in their notebooks and phones, a voice biometric system can verify their identity with only a short sample of their voice – whether taken from a natural conversation or in a more controlled fashion.

In many situations, a Voice Biometric solution is the only technology that can provide reliable authentication with such ease – there is no need for a keyboard, a web-cam, or any special hardware such as a fingerprint reader, and there is virtually no overhead in terms of overall transaction time.

What’s more, the most powerful Voice Biometric systems are language-independent, recognizing unique voice characteristics regardless of language or accent. This is especially important in regions where multiple languages or dialects are spoken.

Voice Biometrics can provide a smooth user experience that still accurately verifies the identity of customers.

6. Foster accessibility

Voice biometrics solutions are suitable for almost everyone, including many of those with speech-related disabilities. “A good language-independent Voice Biometric system relies on the voice characteristics rather than the actual words spoken.” Wheeler (a digital analyst at Aculab, who has cerebral palsy and limited speech) explained. “This means it can still be used by people with impaired speech.”

Voice Biometrics provider, Aculab Cloud, has recently published a blog post illustrating the accessibility features of its VoiSentry Speaker Verification & Identification (SVI) system.

7. Get started Quickly

Voice Biometrics can be implemented easily on your platform of choice – hardware server, data center, cloud, or even a SaaS pay-as-you-go model. Best of all, it is highly scalable and can be applied in a variety of different applications such as contact centers, healthcare management, public services and financial systems.

These flexible integration options make it simple to implement cloud-based Voice Biometric solutions. Aculab VoiSentry with SaaS, cloud-based and / or subscription-based models, enables developers to add the enhanced security and user convenience of biometric voice authentication to their customer contact applications within hours.

MORE RESOURCES

Want to learn more about how Aculab VoiSentry’s Voice Biometrics can help facilitate a seamless, secure and password-less user experience? Click here to try the Demo.