Fraud classification and recommendations on fraud dispute handling within the international wholesale telecom industry for Voice services
April 2023
According to surveys of CFCA, ACFE and ETNO the potential commercial loss due to fraud in telecommunication networks represents 2.22% of the Global Telecom revenues. I3F members assume that fraud entails an average commercial business risk in the amount of 1 % of their revenue.
As fraudulent activity impacting the telecommunications industry continues to grow with no signs of slowing down, it’s no surprise that fraudsters are becoming increasingly skilled in exploiting international service providers, network operators and end users by using new technologies (eg. machine learning) and expanding to new telco services (eg. SMS).
The risk to Telecom Service Providers is twofold; firstly, there is a loss of revenue when the party that is abused while using the services is not able to pay for these; secondly and potentially far more damaging, is the reputational damage related to facilitating, carrying and making profits out of fraudulent and scam traffic.
Hence, i3F members focus on fraud detection and fraud prevention to minimize commercial loss for themselves, their partners and the consumers. This document describes the main fraud types relevant for the international service providers, detection methods and possible dispute actions.