The popularity of blocks on inbound international calls that spoof domestic numbers is becoming a theme for this website, courtesy of the rate at which new countries and telcos are implementing this simple but effective way of reducing fraud. Now it is the turn of Bitė Group, which runs operators in Lithuania and Latvia, to laud the advantages of the new blocks they are putting in place. A customer announcement on their Latvian website says their blocks will go live imminently following the successful implementation of equivalent blocks by their Lithuanian sister telco. The latter has reportedly blocked 70,000 spoofed international calls in the first two weeks since their new block went live.
The blocks will reportedly filter out:
- calls that present a Latvian/Lithuanian landline number despite originating abroad;
- calls that originated abroad and which present a Bitė mobile number belonging to a user who is not currently roaming; and
- calls presenting any numbers in the Latvian/Lithuanian mobile and landline ranges which have not yet been assigned to an operator.
The new blocks were welcomed by Edgars Pastars, Senior Legal Advisor to Latvia’s Financial Industry Association. Pastars said (with my translation beneath):
Bite Latvija iniciatīva viennozīmīgi samazinās īstenoto krāpniecības gadījumu skaitu un būs kā piemērs starpnozaru ciešai sadarbībai.
This initiative by Bitė Latvia will clearly reduce the number of fraud cases and provide an example of close cross-sector cooperation.
The news shows how telcos can respond to pressure from banks that want more proactive prevention of scams. On the same day as Bitė Latvia published their announcement, Armands Onzuls of the Financial Industry Association warned that “the scale of telephone fraud has become almost uncontrollable”.
Two categories of fraud stories get over-reported. The first category is those stories which say fraud is getting worse. The second category is dedicated to stories which say fraud was reduced using a really expensive, really complicated high-technology solution. This story belongs to a third category which never receives sufficient attention: simple improvements in controls can significantly reduce fraud. But this third type of story needs to be repeated most of all. Every telco and every regulator should hear about consumer protection controls which are easy to reproduce and have been proven to be effective. The sooner they learn about them, the sooner they will replicate them.
Thankfully, the good news about blocks on spoofed inbound international calls and on calls which spoof unallocated and unassigned numbers has spread widely in a relatively short space of time. Let us all keep sharing the news until every customer of every telco in every country receives the same level of protection that Bitė Group and many others are providing to their subscribers.
