I am James Greenley, chief software engineer of the Commsrisk Global Fraud Dashboard. I created the software that automatically collates publicly available data from multiple sources so regulators and communications professionals can obtain an unbiased and up-to-date perspective on trends relating to fraud, spam and other network abuses.

Eric has published his final article on Commsrisk, but my work on the Global Fraud Dashboard continues. I will now also publish short updates on Commsrisk about the dashboard: new graphs, noteworthy new data, and related insights that may be useful to professionals in the telecoms industry.

The dashboard fills an important and overlooked role. Fraud prevention policy should be based on evidence. Policies made without data are uninformed policies. Before the dashboard was created, there was no central place to compare public data about fraud, spam and network abuse over time or across countries.

That is why the dashboard must continue to exist and evolve. It is not enough to say that fraud is increasing, decreasing, or that particular mitigations are effective. Such claims are too often made to support an agenda. There are strong incentives against publishing bad news. Talk is cheap, but the policies that follow are not. That is why assertions about fraud and its prevention must be tested against objective facts and figures.

If you are not yet familiar with the dashboard, I encourage you to visit and bookmark it. It will remain the main focus of my work for Commsrisk, and the foundation for future articles published here.

Commsrisk remains open to guest articles. If you have feedback about the dashboard, know of a useful public source of data, would like to publish an article on Commsrisk, or would like to arrange a conversation about any of this work, please email me at james AT commsrisk.com.

Cease to resist, giving my goodbye
Drive my car into the ocean
You’ll think I’m dead, but I sail away
On a wave of mutilation

This is the final Commsrisk article. The website will continue to host the Commsrisk Global Fraud Dashboard under the stewardship of James Greenley, the software engineer who created it, for as long as he can find financial backers to support that work. Presenting reams of objective data compiled from varied international sources is the best way to build on the platform constructed during the first two decades of this website. Facts and figures need to rule; words are too messy and too easily twisted. My regular narratives about the communications sector end now, not with regret, but with pleasure. I am glad to be released to live a different life to the one that has consumed so much of me.