BY JONJIE SENA, TRANSUNION

As a result, even though consumers and businesses alike consider the phone as the most important communications tool, wary consumers are just not picking up. While bad actors are tapping into many channels to commit fraud, the phone is often seen as the tipping point for consumers: who feel reassured enough by human( or deepfake) voices to click on text or email links or share one-time passcodes.

In fact, the Federal Trade Commission( FTC) noted consumers lost over $ 12.5 billion in fraud last year. People lost more money per person when having interacted with scammers on the phone: an average of $ 1,500 per individual. And once again, imposter scams topped the list of fraud reported.

LOYALTY, COSTS

Call spoofing, data breaches, and imposter scams don’ t just impact consumers, they also affect businesses: especially financial institutions. And in a recent TransUnion-commissioned study by Forrester Consulting, 63 % of decision-makers rated call spoofing among their top five challenges in outbound voice and the second reason why customers are not answering calls.

So, let’ s look deeper into call spoofing and why it is so damaging. Call spoofing occurs when a caller intentionally falsifies the phone number and caller ID information transmitted by phone. It’ s often used in imposter scams to make calls to consumers look legitimate— commonly appearing as a financial institution or other trusted business partners— to steal money or personal information. In addition to financial losses from fraud and scams, research shows the threat of call spoofing damages customer relationships and loyalty. Consumers are all too happy to change their financial service firm, for example, if they lose trust in their ability to protect them from fraudulent schemes.

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Call spoofing also leads to a loss of trust, increasing service tickets and decreasing the effectiveness of outbound communications campaigns.

STEPS TO PROTECT

Despite the recognized need for robust solutions, discovering effective call spoofing protections remains challenging. 67 % of decision-makers in the Forrester Consulting study consider protection against call spoofing and related fraud as essential for enhancing customer engagement and increasing contact rates.

There are numerous measures businesses can take to reduce call spoofing, including branded calling and spoofed call protection. Branded calling enables businesses to add rich call content to the mobile display, including their names, numbers, logos, and reasons for the calls.

In addition, calls receive end-to-end call authentication, ensuring they haven’ t been spoofed. 62 % of decision-makers said an indication on mobile display that the call is authenticated and hasn’ t been spoofed is important or critical to increasing customer engagement / contact rates.

Spoofed call protection enables organizations to digitally“ sign” their own calls so they can distinguish between legitimate and spoofed calls and apply proper call treatment. This puts call authentication in the hands of the business: which is clearly vested in protecting itself and its customers from spoofed calls and the financial damage they can inflict.

When a company signs its own calls, it can ensure full endto-end call authentication: and help to prevent spoofed calls before they even reach the consumer.

Jonjie Sena is Vice President of Product Management for TransUnion, responsible for driving the go-to-market strategy for Contact Center and Communications Solutions. In this role, Jonjie focuses on helping businesses overcome the impacts of call spoofing and robocalling so they can restore trust in phone calls.