The news follows the i3forum’s Fight Fraud workgroup having established principles and KPIs for international carriers to fight against voice fraud, it is now working on establishing new guidelines to tackle SMS fraud.
“Earlier this year, the GSC raised the flag and informed us their members’ SMS services were increasingly witnessing the effects of fraud attacks and there were growing concerns around dispute management and payments,” said Gonzalez, chair of i3forum’s Fight Fraud workgroup, newly elected member of i3forum board and head of fraud prevention and analytics at BICS.
“Having successfully established standards and a code of conduct to combat fraud in voice, which was endorsed by the Global Leaders’ Forum (GLF), we’re looking forward to working collaboratively with the GSC to establish the same principles in the area of SMS services.”
i3forum is already in discussions with the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) to expand on the work that they’ve developed together and the new partnership with the GSC will help to enhance insights on the challenges of dealing with SMS fraud operationally and financially.
According to the Communications Fraud Control Association (CFCA) Fraud Loss Survey 2021, SMS fraud accounted for $3.65 billion in losses and still growing. Contributors to the increase in malicious SMS fraud include SMS hacking, smishing, spoofing, spamming and malware.
“The GSC’s members are at the sharp end resolving and dealing with disputes and fraudulent settlements. Our partnership with i3forum gives us the opportunity to play an active role in agreeing on and creating the right principles and guidelines to combat SMS fraud,” said Simon Dodsworth, executive council member of the GSC, as well as VP and head of voice trading at Arelion.
“The time to collaborate is now. Our livelihoods are at stake as the speed at which messaging fraud is accelerating is like condensing the last 20 years of voice fraud evolution into a fraction of that time. Given that voice margins are declining, many companies are relying on messaging as a useful supplement to their revenues. The GSC is proud to begin work with i3forum to fight the surging existential threat facing the carrier world today.”
