Vodafone CallProtect will warn Vodafone Germany customers of potential fraudulent, scam, or spam-type calls, leveraging RealNetworks' KONTXT technology, which is an AI-based anti-spam solution for messaging and voice calls.
"Global fraudulent call activities increased substantially since the outbreak of the pandemic, which led to the launch of this initiative," said Mathias Grünwald, director of sales at RealNetworks.
"We are excited about Vodafone's decision to partner with RealNetworks to take advantage of our leading anti-fraud solution KONTXT to protect their customers".
Using RealNetworks technology, Vodafone Germany will have access to a rich feature set for anti-fraud protection for both voice calls and messaging. This includes enabling clients of KONTXT to decide which modules are activated for data analysis and customer protection.
Specifically, the Vodafone CallProtect trial project will use the KONTXT Android SDK for improved voice calls and the KONTXT Reputation Service for number lookups. The KONTXT Reputation Service database contains known spam numbers provided from leading spam database providers, it also offers MSISDN risk rating based on AI / machine learning technology.
In addition, Vodafone CallProtect will be integrated into the Vodafone Secure Net service for Android. Vodafone Secure Net is a mobile network security. When connected to the Vodafone mobile network in Germany, it automatically blocks harmful sites and quickly protects against viruses before they can cause harm.
Once activated, all incoming calls will be matched against a database to verify if the calling number is a known spam or scam number. If a positive match is made, a message is displayed on the user's phone allowing them to reject the call.
CallProtect will be for free to existing Vodafone Secure Net users in Germany and the pilot project will run for six months beginning at launch of the CallProtect service.
