What happened to telecom fraud? Is it still a problem? Should you as an owner of a company be concerned? Fraudulent phone calls are a concern to all companies, regardless of the advancements in technology for security. It's terrifying to imagine the possible cost of thousands to businesses because of phone fraud. The fact is that phone fraud can put your business out of business and that is terrifying. Despite the advancement of VOIP technology, the thieves have continued to figure out ways to hack into even the most complicated systems and companies such as mine and ours can continue to suffer from this. There are three primary kinds of phone fraud that most of us need to be concerned with and that will be addressed in this article. Nuisance fraud (cramming, hitting), fraud in the telephone system owned by the company (PBX key system, PBX) Voice mail fraud, and the most recent issue, fraud in VOIP phones. Nuisance fraud: Business professionals are likely to be a victim of nuisance fraud at one time or another. Also called slamming, crumbing, and various other types of fraud. Although nuisance fraud isn't likely to cause a major disruption to any company, it could drain revenue if it is not addressed on the phone bill. Cramming occurs when a third-party provider charges fees or services that the client hasn't been authorized to pay for. These charges are neither ordered or requested by your business. These charges could include services such as bogus voicemail charges, operator-assisted calls as well as calling program programs, monthly fees, credit check services, and monthly service charges. Also, local call and white pages advertisements can show up on your business phone invoices or be billed to you directly. Cramming is the addition of charges to a subscriber's phone bill for services that were not requested nor ordered by the customer or for the cost of calls or services which were not disclosed to the consumer. These charges are often assessed by unscrupulous third-party suppliers of communication and data that telephone companies are required by law, to allow the third-party to add to the bill. Have you ever looked over your phone bill and notice unusual charges from other providers that you didn't recognize? If yes, the it's likely that you've been charged a lot. find here may have hidden charges in their bills that are difficult to spot. They may continue to run for years without anyone being conscious. How can mobile phone stop the cramming process and receive refunds? Start by calling your local phone provider and request them to reverse the charges to the party who was responsible for the cramming. In most cases they will. If you want to file a complaint against them, you can contact the FCC, the FTC, or your state attorney general. The first step is to make sure that the person who crammed you understands that you would like to offer them the chance to reimburse your money. It can happen in the event of an unauthorised switching or change of service provider that provides local, local toll or long distance service. It is a frustrating experience because fraudulent phone companies can easily to switch or pic your long distance service onto their plans, usually at a higher cost than your preferred or selected provider had offered. If you do discover the fraud, there is the issue of changing all of your lines back to the long distance service that you have chosen and then requesting the fraudulent company to issue you a reimbursement. What can you do to avoid it? Request that the carrier place a pic freeze on your phone lines. Make sure you have an official password for access on your accounts for local, cellular, and long distance accounts. You should also restrict all access to those accounts to two key employees of the company. Phone system and voice mail fraud: These types of frauds are difficult for many companies and will persist in the long run, as long as companies have PBX and Key-type phone systems in place. Long distance calls cost money and hackers are able to gain access. Prevention of this kind of fraud is much simpler than fixing it after it has occurred and let's admit it, as with most criminals hackers are lazy and they'll leave your company to their own devices and move on to another if your system has the necessary safeguards in place. First, make sure that the manufacturer of your phone system has supplied master default passwords for your voicemail and phone systems are changed at your location. Hackers have the passwords and could easily access your system if they can get access. Many of these master passwords used for phone systems (i.e. many of the master passwords (i.e. Avaya Siemens, Nortel Mitel, Cisco, Mitel, Mitel and Mitel) can be found online. You can change your password by calling the company that services your phone system. It is also important to make sure that your telephone systems' remote access is secure. Remote access to your system may be secured with security encryption technology. Then, ensure that your employees don't use easy passwords like 1111 to access their voice mail accounts. These passwords can be easily stolen. Make sure you set your voice mail system to auto ask employees to change their passwords each 90 days or so. Be make phone call to delete all voicemails which haven't been utilized by employees after they leave the company. Why? The hacker gains control of the voicemail box and then records yes He then connects to a third party and instructs the outside operator to call the number of your departed employee's old mailbox. The operator then asks if you're willing to pay third party charges to cover Mr. find more ' calls. The voice mail box replies, yes, as programed. Businesses today are facing a new danger from weak connections in their personnel, especially the receptionist at the company. It is commonly described as social engineering fraud. The employees and your receptionist must be alert to any call received in which someone could be identified as someone trying to test the lines of the company behind the phone. The caller could state, I'm with the phone company and I'm conducting an experiment on your phone systems, please transfer me to a particular extension. Transferring a person to certain numbers is the first step to access an outside line dialing 9 and dialing the number 0 accesses the outside operator who can facilitate calls to any location in the world to the thieves. The calls are then back charged to your company. Hackers are also known to use other ploys like finding out who the executives of large companies are and then impersonating the person on a call to that company. Because board members rarely interact with receptionists as often as employees, it's possible that the receptionist will not recognize their voice. The power of a company board member implies receptionists have the ability to transfer unlimited amounts to the caller. The criminal usually isn't found until the time of the payment of the bill. This scam should be disclosed to receptionists and employees. Numerous businesses rake in thousands of dollars from overseas calls as a result of this ploy. Be on the lookout for a toll-free number that your business could use for inbound calls. Hackers can call the toll-free number and utilize codes and features for calls abroad and also to charge fees for paid calling services. Another thing to consider is limit some conference and call forwarding features on your business phone system which could aid hackers to forward calls on your dime. Make an appointment with your vendor of your phone system to conduct a vulnerability study to make sure your telephone system is safe. A lot of the top telephone equipment makers, such as Siemens, Nortel, Nortel Mitel, and Mitel are armed with security bulletins that can help to keep your system secure. Fraud through VOIP the third and final telecom voice fraud concern to be discussed is the most recent threat to companies and that's VOIP fraud. Although reverse lookup over IP fraud isn't yet widely known but it is becoming common. As discussed in the previous section regarding phone system fraud, one of the best ways to avoid this type of fraud is to alter the system passwords in your VoIP phone system. Recent hacks on VOIP systems are beginning to get more attention, but actual fraud cases are only beginning to become an issue. Two individuals were detained in 2007 for routing calls through an ports that were not protected by other companies in order to route them onto providers. Two men transferred half a billion phone calls to a VoIP provider over three weeks. Federal investigators believe that the two could have earned as much as $1 million from the scam. But, actual instances of VOIP fraud using these systems are still somewhat unusual, yet there is a lot of risk for harm, as vulnerabilities and holes in security are becoming more prevalent and more easily exploitable by resourceful hackers. whitepages reverse phone could use system passwords for access to company VoIP voice systems, the potential to take millions of minutes of long distance service. How? Hackers research the security bulletins of VOIP vendors and gather public information on the IP addresses of companies that are published on the internet, which allows them to hack into client systems. They devise and use custom software codes to crack access codes and access exposed data ports and computers and data gateways. Hackers could easily use default passwords or poorly selected passwords. To stop video phone call against your business and stay up-to-date with the most recent security technologies and VOIP fraud prevention guidelines, consult with the VOIP equipment suppliers and ask them specific questions about how you can best safeguard your system. It might be beneficial having a professional conduct an audit on your security of your VOIP system, particularly if you own an extensive one. blog and IT managers must utilize the most recent encryption methods to access their networks and also train and supervise their employees in the effective protection of their company data and IP system information. A thorough telecommunications audit is the best way to determine whether there's any type of telecom fraud within an organization.
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