Three UK and Callsign have announced a partnership to deliver enhanced fraud prevention for Three’s customers. The announcement is a consequence of Callsign joining forces with CKH Innovations Opportunities Development (CKH IOD), a unit of CK Hutchison’s telecom division, to enhance fraud detection and prevention for the benefit of CK Hutchison’s 3 Group customers. Three UK will be the first operator in the group, and the first mobile operator in the UK, to enable Callsign’s enhanced customer protection technology.
Callsign will aim to mitigate fraud by providing additional customer ID verification to banks, based on specific fraud risk triggers notified by Three UK. This can help protect customers from tricksters who use fraudulent means, such as email or phishing scams, to obtain an individual’s personal data deceptively and use it to gain access to their phone number and bank account, the press release says. It can help identify when a fraudster may have accessed a genuine mobile subscriber’s phone number.
Ryan Gosling, Head of Partnerships at Callsign (pictured) explained how phone users would benefit:
For years now, I have been helping banks fight fraud, especially as they realise the fallibility of the password. As mobile banking has taken over, at Callsign we are increasingly working with the mobile industry to help them protect their customers from banking fraud.
Commsrisk has already highlighted the need for telcos to do more to verify customer identity because:
- data breaches have made it harder to verify identities using older methods;
- phones will be used to identify people whether telcos like it or not, so telcos should generate added value rather than fighting the cost;
- customers and experts are sceptical about how well some telcos have managed identities so far; and
- digital identity management has become big business.
As interesting as this partnership is, Callsign and Three UK were amongst the losing nominees for this year’s Glomo Authentication and Security Award which was won by Nok Nok for their biometric authentication platform.
