The Atlanta, Ga.-based anti-call center fraud solution provider Pindrop Security announced it found a 30% rise in enterprise attacks and more than 86.2 million attacks per month on U.S. consumers in its annual Phone Fraud Report.

Phone fraud continues to menace enterprises across industries and borders, with large financial institutions' call centers exposed to an average of more than $9 million in potential fraud each year, according to the Pindrop report, which analyzed several million calls for threats.

Financial and retail institutions have seen an increase in phone fraud since 2013, with one in every 2,200 calls being fraudulent – and this rate increases for retailers that sell popular, expensive products with a high resell rate, Pindrop Security said. The report also indicates that credit card issuers receive the highest rate of fraud attempts, with one in every 900 calls being fraudulent.

“These attackers are sophisticated, using a variety of tactics, including automation, working in criminal rings and using both the phone and cyber channel to make tracking their actions more difficult,” Matt Garland, vice president of research and head of the newly formed Pindrop Labs team, which analyzed the data, said. “As major data breaches such as Anthem and Target have occurred, attackers have found the phone channel to be the vulnerable underbelly for corporations and consumers, allowing them to monetize the breaches through social engineering and account takeovers.”

As part of their ongoing monitoring of phone threats, Pindrop Labs tracks common scams targeting consumers, such as recent IRS or technical support scams. These attacks have successfully defrauded millions, particularly consumers in vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, immigrants and young college students. Robocalling services, which provide a cheap method to make thousands of calls per day, have increased in frequency to one in every six phone numbers calling the average consumer, with 2.5% of U.S. phones (8.1 million in total) receiving at least one robocall per week.

One key report finding stated that on average, large financial institutions exposed more than $9 million in funds to attackers last year. Banks experience a fraud call rate of one in every 2,650 calls, while brokerages report slightly less, with only one in 3,000 calls being fraud. Attackers use VoIP lines for 53% of their calls, compared to 7.8% of the general public who use VoIP as a means for phone communication.

The FBI has also been warning individuals about scammers who will do just about anything to obtain personal financial information, including pretending to be law enforcement.

In fact, an old scam is reemerging in which the caller claims the targeted victim failed to report for jury duty. The caller claims there is now an arrest warrant out, but tells the individual he or she can get out of the arrest by verifying personal information. The scammer might go even further and demand that the person pay up by providing a credit card number or buy a prepaid card and share the account number with the scammer.

The jury duty scam has been around since 2005 or earlier, but people continue to get calls. Another variation of this scam involves criminals posing on the phone as debt collectors or phony IRS agents, or pretending to protect consumers from credit card fraud.

Instant Insights /

Call Center Fraud Rises: Pindrop Security

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