Identity theft is at an all-time high and in 2019 alone, fraud losses grew 15% to $16.9 billion. As the most used personal identifier for consumer account management, the mobile phone number is increasingly becoming an important factor to help organizations mitigate fraud and assess risk. This is especially true when initiating financial transactions where businesses are increasingly relying on mobile devices for second-factor authentication access. In addition, 833,000 porting and pooling transactions are made each day in the U.S. alone, which makes number porting data another key tool being utilized to authenticate the identity of consumers.

Identity theft is at an all-time high, with mobile number account takeover doubling from 2017 to 2018. On this episode of the American Bankers Association podcast, iconectiv’s Kathy Timko, Head of LNPA Services, discusses the rising trend of account takeovers due to mobile identity fraud. According to Timko, utilizing number portability data is one of the strongest methods to prevent account takeover.

Most forms of communications fraud have one thing in common: They exploit trust. Take callerID, for instance. History has shown that when callerID information is compromised, communications spam, scams and spoofing soars. Learn more about how the industry is working together to effectively mitigate fraud across voice calls , text messages and chatbot conversations.

Between voice calls, text messages and chatbots, businesses have more opportunities than ever to interact with consumers. Unfortunately, fraudsters do too. Read more about how the industry is working collaboratively to eradicate these fraudulent attacks on consumers not only by keeping the bad actors out, but also by preventing a handful of messaging aggregators who are allowing the delivery of suspect and fraudulent traffic.

Chat functions have become a key pillar of customer contact centers. People are accustomed to the convenience of instant messaging their friends, family and colleagues, which led to a natural transition to texting with brands. Chat is a practical way for brands to engage customers at the point of decision making and helps remove any information obstacles they may encounter. Still, chat services at contact centers can become even more robust when powered by Rich Communication Services (RCS)…

Voice calls, text messages and chatbots have made business-to-consumer (B2C) engagement more accessible, robust and efficient. Now, the next generation of business messaging with exciting new features has arrived through Rich Communication Services (RCS). Rich Business Messaging (RBM), powered by RCS, has an opportunity to secure consumer trust right from the beginning by integrating verification capabilities into its bedrock. At MEF Connects: Rich Communications, The Future of Business…

An average of 60 billion illegal robocalls are made each year in the United States alone resulting in nearly $10 billion of financial impact. Additionally, of the 8.3 trillion text messages sent annually, 5% or 4.15 billion of those messages are smishing attempts. As illegal robocalls and spam continue to rise, consumers ignore calls and text messages from numbers they do not recognize. As a result, important communications remain unheard and unseen. Without a proper verification system,…

Throughout the global pandemic, business text messaging has become increasingly integral to contacting customers. Texting boasts a 98% open rate compared to 22% for email, which is not surprising, since texting is traditionally considered virtually spam free. So it might be surprising to learn that while 85% of customers would prefer to send text messages to get information about products and services, 61% of businesses are still not using SMS/MMS to communicate with customers. As businesses…

iconectiv attended International Telecoms Week to showcase its trusted communications platform, TruReach. Though ITW 2020 attracted telecommunications professionals working from home offices all around the world, the industry remained unified, establishing consensus on a variety of topics. 1) By #KeepingTheWorldConnected, the communications industry has been, and continues to be, responsible for sustaining the global economy during crises. By the nature of our industry,…

As COVID-19 cases continued to rise worldwide, technology followed suit with many industries, including healthcare, amplifying their usage. Frontline heroes turned to telehealth technology with increased frequency compared to years prior as more than 46% of patient services were offered virtually. Although treating patients remotely is not new, (the earliest record shows telehealth in use in the late 1950s and early 1960s) privacy and security regulations have evolved to help safeguard patients…

As technology evolves, so do the methods that cybercriminals utilize to commit identity theft and fraud. Last year alone, the Federal Trade Commission processed 1.4M fraud reports amounting to $1.48B in losses. Given that federal law states that financial institutions are held responsible for returning consumers’ money if their account was hacked, it is extremely critical to ensure financial institutions are utilizing an authorized source to provide data in order to assess risk properly while…