The State of Voice Calls: Challenges and Trust Issues
Do you pick up phone calls from unknown numbers? While many of these spoofed numbers and spam calls are just an annoyance, a significant portion are scam calls that successfully defraud consumers of billions of dollars annually.
The voice channel continues to be a vital part of revenue generation and customer outreach for enterprises. However, as trust in this channel declines, many consumers now view unknown numbers as potential spam calls, resulting in a decreased willingness to answer their phones. This erosion of trust undermines the value of voice communication and poses a significant challenge for telecommunications service providers. With spam calls, robocalls, and spoofing rampant in fraudulent activities, it is crucial to enhance customer protection and restore confidence in the voice channel. Choosing the right tools to address these issues is essential.
Neural Technologies’ SCAMBlock provides an end-to-end voice call defense solution designed to proactively detect, alert, and block scam calls, spam calls, robocalls, and spoofing. It aims to protect both consumers and businesses effectively.
In this article, we will look into:
- The Significance Advanced Call Analytics and Blocking
- Real-Time Voice Announcement Alert and How It Works?
- Robust Voice Protection with AI/ML Driven SCAMBlock
The Significance of Advanced Call Analytics and Blocking
As sophisticated and evolving fraud schemes continue to rise, the ability to identify and block suspicious calls in real-time before reaching customers is crucial. Fraudsters or scammers employ a range of voice fraud and scam techniques, including:
- Wangiri Fraud Calls ("missed call scam”): This scheme involves fraudsters calling victims from premium-rate international numbers and hanging up after just one ring. The goal is to entice the victim to call back, allowing the scammers to profit while the caller incurs exorbitant charges.
- Robocalls: These calls deliver an automated pre recorded voice message using auto-dialing software. While some robocalls provide useful information, such as appointment reminders, many are often used for spam or phishing attempts that employ tactics like fake urgency, tech support fraud, investment schemes, etc.
- Spam Risk Calls: These unsolicited calls and unwanted communications can bombard users with irrelevant or malicious content. They can facilitate unauthorized recordings and social engineering scams, potentially leading to account takeovers, identity theft, and other fraudulent activities.
- Caller ID Spoofing: This tactic involves manipulating the Caller ID to disguise the call's true origin, making it appear as if it is coming from a legitimate or trusted source. The displayed number may seem to be from a well-known business or a reputable institution, such as a bank or a large mail-order merchant aims to trick recipients into answering the call, ultimately leading them to reveal account numbers and other sensitive information.
- Deepfake Voice Fraud (AI-Generated Voice Cloning): This technique utilizes artificial intelligence to produce highly realistic audio imitations of a person's voice. It can be employed to impersonate individuals, frequently for malicious intents, such as scamming or coercing victims into revealing sensitive information.
Our SCAMBlock solution utilizes advanced call analytics and machine learning technologies integrated into the telecom operator’s network. It proactively monitors and analyzes the large volume of incoming call and signaling traffic based on caller information, behavior, and call patterns in real-time providing comprehensive analytics results. Our solution automatically updates the database, generates alerts, and blocks suspicious calls, including those with national caller IDs coming in over international gateways. With its call decision classification capability, this minimizes the blocking of legitimate calls.
Real-Time Voice Announcement Alert and How It Works
Having the capability to make informed, real-time decisions about incoming calls can improve the user experience. When users are alerted to potential fraudulent calls and are provided with information about the legitimacy of the call, it can lead to a more trustworthy and reliable experience with voice communication services.
Our SCAMBlock solution provides real-time alerts to subscribers on fraud-likely calls by tagging a prefix to the caller number display and it also provides Voice Announcement Alerts against high-risk international scam calls enabling users to make informed decisions before answering the call serving as an additional layer of protection and preventive measure.
How Does Real-Time Voice Announcement Alert Work?
The Voice Announcement Alert feature is a notification system that uses speech to convey notifications to users. When a suspicious call is detected, the system will be triggered to deliver voice security alerts, informing the user of the likelihood of a fraudulent call. The message, language, and duration can be tailored to meet the service providers’ needs.
An example of a scenario is when subscribers receive a suspicious call from an international number with a falsified caller ID that begins with a "+" prefix to resemble a call made as though the call is coming from their own country. In this case, the Voice Announcement Alert will be triggered automatically, and the subscribers will hear an alert informing them that it is an international call and could potentially be a scam.
Informed call decision-making is crucial in reducing exposure to scams and protecting personal information. With the rise of caller ID spoofing and phishing scams, traditional methods of identifying legitimate calls are no longer sufficient. Real-time fraud detection systems address this challenge by providing users with actionable information before they answer a call.
By integrating real-time fraud detection alerts with automated call screening and smart blocking capabilities at the network level, telecommunications providers can offer users a more robust defense against scam and spam calls. This capability not only helps prevent personal and financial information from being compromised but also reduces the psychological stress associated with frequent scam attempts. Users can feel more secure knowing that their calls are being evaluated for potential fraud, leading to a more positive and trusting experience with voice communication.
Robust Voice Protection with AI/ML Driven SCAMBlock
The Role of AI and Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are becoming essential for blocking scam and spam calls before they reach end users, thereby enhancing voice call network security and fraud detection and prevention systems.
Their ability to process and analyze large datasets in real-time, along with capabilities in predictive analytics, self-learning, and continuous learning, is crucial for generating immediate responses, such as real-time voice announcement warnings in call screening and smart blocking systems.
- Immediate Risk Alerts and Warnings
AI-powered systems provide real-time fraud warnings by analyzing voice calls as they happen, enabling immediate risk alerts and allowing companies to take proactive measures to prevent potential fraud before it escalates.
Machine learning models are trained to detect known and unknown scam and spam call patterns, allowing systems to instantly flag suspicious voice interactions based on predefined criteria, continuously improving detection accuracy over time through self-learning.
With decades of experience in delivering effective data solutions and for its proven success in tackling fraud and a strong reputation for fraud analytics capability and network signaling expertise, Neural Technologies’ AI/ML-driven SCAMBlock solution can provide service providers with robust, real-time and effective voice protection tool to fight against evolving fraudulent calls, spoof calls and spam calls.
