Phone scams, known as Wangiri, are a major international problem. As one of the first operators in the world, Telia Company has now introduced a technical solution that blocks Wangiri calls.
Wangiri” is Japanese for “one ring and drop”. The scam works like this: A scammer places a robocall to a number and hangs up after one or two rings. They may call back several times. The idea is to get the caller to call the number back. When they do, the caller is prompted to pay long distance fees to connect the call, fees that are usually paid in part to the scammer.
The scammers constantly change behavior to trick people around the world, for example by swiftly replacing the number series used, making it difficult to stop the problem.
Telia Company’s unique solution which has been developed Group Fraud & Revenue Assurance, is based on an identification of the Wangiri traffic that automatically blocks calls to and from the identified number series for some time. One prerequisite for the solution to work is that the calls are already blocked when they enter the company’s international wholesale network.
“It’s a great feeling to be able to protect our customers from this type of scams across all our markets. It is extremely difficult to completely stop the scams and occasional calls can still slip through, so it is important to never call numbers you do not recognize. But since we introduced this technical solution, we have reduced the number with just over a million calls per week,” says Staffan Åkesson, CTO Telia Company.
