Commsrisk Top Ten for 2025

Commsrisk published 214 articles last year, comprised of 225,047 words. This compares to a total of 4,149 articles and 3,121,624 words since the website launched in 2006. That is a lot of words. However, it is now time to take a different approach, with fewer stories and more data. 2026 will see Commsrisk pivoting towards the capturing and presentation of objective data about the abuse of communications networks through our Global Fraud Dashboard. There are three reasons for the change.

• Some people just lie about statistics. They get away with it because there is so little examination and awareness of data that has been put in the public domain. If there is respect for a comparative analysis of data from multiple countries then it will be harder for charlatans to have an adverse impact on polices by fabricating statistics.
• Other people use opinion polls to influence decisions. Opinion polls are an unsatisfactory way to measure performance. They are easily manipulated by changing the way questions have been framed. Many of the people who respond to questionnaires about the risks faced by comms providers and their customers are only submitting guesses because they have not seen any relevant objective data.
• Shit or bust. The broken way in which societies formulate policies to tackle networked crime deserves its share of the blame for the global scamdemic. Commsrisk is just a website, but if we cannot challenge a broken system that harms many people then we might as well give up entirely. Explaining problems and potential solutions through stories is not proving as effective as previously hoped, probably because fools and liars tell stories too. Being less constrained by the truth, they are better at telling the kinds of stories that certain audiences want to hear. Objective data is the last hope of persuading policymakers to make decisions that best serve the interests of the general public, and we are fortunate that democratizing technologies like the cloud and AI have made it possible to collect and disseminate objective data like never before.

There will still be new articles on Commsrisk each week, but not enough to justify a monthly rundown of the 10 most popular articles. So this will be the last Top Ten article until the next annual round-up, assuming Commsrisk survives another year. I am loathe to make that assumption. Wise risk professionals like Nassim Taleb correctly observe that the best predictor of how long an institution will exist in future is how long it has already existed. Commsrisk is in its twentieth year, which might encourage optimism about its future. However, institutions are made up of multiple people. Individuals have finite lives. The remaining lifespan of Commsrisk will depend on choices made by more people than just me.

Commsrisk has always needed more contributors. One advantage of building the automation behind the Global Fraud Dashboard is that the data and presentation for each chart is updated with minimal or no human intervention. We will launch a crowdfunding drive with the intention to massively accelerate the rate at which new data is added to the dashboard. Whether we meet the crowdfunding target is outside my control, just as I cannot control which authors volunteer to contribute.

It may be approaching its twentieth birthday, but I have always thought of Commsrisk as an experiment in human behavior. I look forward to learning more from the results of this experiment for as long as it continues, despite the fact that human behavior is sometimes disappointing when studied objectively. One thing I have learned from this year’s experiments leads me to be optimistic: the Global Fraud Dashboard, which was launched in May, received a lot more visits than even the most popular articles listed below.

Another thing I have learned from this experiment is that many people read our articles, and that most of them are recurring readers. It has been fascinating to learn about the interests of the audience. These were the 10 most popular articles during 2025, as measured by the number of page views. Keep scrolling if you also want to see the 10 most popular articles during December. I am grateful to everybody who ever felt that reading a Commsrisk article was a good use of their time.

1. Global Telco Suspended from Anti-Fraud Consortium after CEO Accused of ‘Breathtaking’ $500mn Loan Fraud
2. 50 Customers of French Bank Hit by Insider SIM Swap Scam
3. Legal Fight between Mobileum Investors Rumbles On
4. SMS Blaster and IMSI-catcher News from Lebanon, Cambodia, Switzerland and the Philippines
5. Chinese Arms Dealer Sold IMSI-Catchers for Huge Paris Drive-by Smishing Scam
6. Police Find SMS Blaster That Sent a Million Smishing Messages in 3 Days
7. Chinese Tourist Caught Driving Smishing SMS Blaster around Oman
8. How the Telecoms Industry Legitimizes Theft
9. The Solution to CLI Spoofing Is GSMA Call Check
10. Leading Anti-Fraud Expert Says Blocking Millions of Scam Calls Is Unsustainable

The following rundown ranks the most popular articles by the number of page views during December 2025.

1. Financial Times Documentary Explains Cybercrime, IMSI-Catchers and Scam Compounds
2. Two Chinese SMS Blaster Scammers Arrested in Serbia
3. Global Telco Suspended from Anti-Fraud Consortium after CEO Accused of ‘Breathtaking’ $500mn Loan Fraud
4. 7-Year Prison Sentence for Fake Airplane Wi‑Fi Scammer Who Copied Private Sex Images from Women’s Phones
5. Police Find SMS Blaster Hoard in Cambodia
6. Regulators in International Anti-Scam Group Issue First Communiqué
7. Dull KPMG Report Reveals More about the Decline of Revenue Assurance than Its Future
8. WhatsApp, Telegram and Snapchat Have 2 Months to Comply with New Indian SIM Binding Rule
9. Anti-fraud Vendor Names 5 “Trusted” Countries Linked to Hidden Telecoms Fraud
10. Mandatory Facial Recognition for New SIMs and New Phones in South Korea