| Still Dialling Through (October 2006) |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by David Brunnen | |||
| Thursday, 05 October 2006 00:00 | |||
|
Back in 2000 it was a £1bn global problem. Regulators and the media raised customer awareness. Telco’s helped by reporting unusual call patterns. Switch suppliers urged installers to close the loopholes. Businesses of all sizes stopped being ripped off - or so we thought. But amazingly the fraud continues. Business voice systems are still being hacked and small firms can still be ripped-off by as much as £30,000 each in a single week. The CMA has looked for the reasons. With lower call costs, free Internet calls, more password protection, new IP switches and better customer care from the Telco’s, it‘s really difficult to see why dial-through fraud is still a problem.
CMA’s expert in this arena is Ron Bell. His company provides support for businesses of all sizes in pursuing fraud recovery claims. He’s a busy man. ‘Part of problem’, he says, ‘is that it’s easy for fraudsters to get hold of hacking tools that improve their productivity.’ But there are at least two other factors behind this mystery.
Firstly, whilst BT has been ‘brilliant’ at reporting unusual call patterns to their business customers, there are now many secondary Telco’s whose international traffic (the main target for fraudsters) is handed off to other carriers. In this competitive world the call pattern monitoring can only be done at a point twice-removed from the victim and no-one imagines that effective systems are in place to provide customer feedback. Secondly, there’s been a gradual decline in awareness and attention by switch installers and maintainers. The original publicity and warnings from manufacturers have long been forgotten. There are thousands of switches out there with default passwords and modems connected for remote configuration.
“As an industry, we are”, says Ron Bell, “making it far too easy for fraudsters. The systems are open. The passwords are never changed. Finding systems to use for ‘free’ international calls is a doddle. Selling these calls to people who need to reach distant family members and friends makes easy money and even rips off local communities.”
December is the peak time. As we head towards the festive season there’ll be many small firms that will not notice that their switches are working overtime in the evenings when no-one’s around. These are the fraudsters limbering up for the big hit when offices are closed over Christmas and the New Year - when demand for ‘cheap’ international calls is at its highest. The CMA urges the industry, particularly switch installers and maintainers, to look again at their password policies – especially where remote configuration is installed - and check that their customers are fully aware of the dangers. Think of it as a Christmas present for your customers – and avoid the dial-through hangovers in the new year. ________________________________________
First published in Comms Business, December 2006
|
|||
| Last Updated on Sunday, 04 January 2009 11:34 |
It’s a crime that we all thought was eliminated years ago.