Many professionals working within the communications sector feel angry about the failure to tackle known bad actors. They are being forced to bottle their frustration while the industry maintains a confident but vague narrative about how it intends to tackle fraud. The conflict became visceral for me during November, as I attended three different industry events:
- The 33rd meeting of the GSMA Fraud and Security Group (FASG), which was held in Tunis;
- The biannual Global Solutions Council (GSC) forum, held in Bucharest; and
- The first ever Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Doha.
The security agenda in Doha was polite, polished and passionless. Talks were given from a stage that was a long way from the audience and several feet above it. There was no interaction with the audience. The talks revolved around highly technical challenges like post-quantum cryptography without ever going into technical details. The few remarks made about the scamdemic were soundbites that were not followed by a meaningful call to action. This kind of non-specific politeness is normal when people do not know each other and have no understanding of how they might work together. It contrasted sharply with the mood at FASG, and even more so at the GSC forum, where participants know each other well because they attend so regularly. There is a palpable desire for more action among professionals who routinely deal with the consequences of crime. For example, GSC brings together a particular class of professionals who are responsible for managing how carriers settle their accounts with each other. They feel strongly about interrupting the flow of money to crooks, and are unhappy when they are not given sufficient support by the police or by colleagues within their own companies. GSC’s leadership team decided they will make more explicit demands of regulators and other carriers in the near future.
A skeptic would question if my anecdotal experience is enough to justify the claim that professionals are angry about the failure to tackle bad actors. However, the claim is backed by other evidence too. The Commsrisk article which generated most views during November will almost certainly top the chart for the whole of 2025. It is likely to become one of the most widely-read Commsrisk articles of all time. The subject of that article is Bankai Group. Industry insiders will immediately apprehend why so many of their peers chose to read this article even though the name of Bankai Group is not known to the general public. Tackling crime involves more than managing how this industry appears to the outside world.
The following articles are ranked by the number of page views during November.
- Global Telco Suspended from Anti-Fraud Consortium after CEO Accused of ‘Breathtaking’ $500mn Loan Fraud
- SMS Blaster and IMSI-catcher News from Lebanon, Cambodia, Switzerland and the Philippines
- Europol’s New Paper on Caller ID Spoofing Is Better than Anything Else You Will Read on This Subject
- Vietnamese Describe Methods SMS Blaster Scammers Use to Evade Detection after New Hanoi Bust
- Explaining the Global Scam Messaging Ecosystem to the Public
- Woman in Scam Compound Given Punishment Exercise until She Dropped Dead
- How Russia and Ukraine Tracks Mobile Phones on the Battlefield
- US Federal Grand Jury Indicts Former CEO of Messaging App for Fraud
- SK Telecom Loses 840,000 Mobile Users after Data Breach; Changes CEO
- Anti-fraud Vendor Names 5 “Trusted” Countries Linked to Hidden Telecoms Fraud
