Telecom fraud is most often, to attract users via spam, or to trick users into doing something which will expose their sensitive information known as smishing (SMS phishing). There are however more aggressive ways that scammers can cause telecom fraud, like premium phone number attacks.
Telecom fraud affects from large companies to small clients. With the above mentioned tactics the scammers try to get a revenue, but with the middle man, being, the telecom company that they are exploiting.
Attacks
There are 4 attacks which need to be discussed and which the user can defend himself against.
Spam. – The user is constantly bombarded with SMS messages, asking for donations for seemingly a-good-cause, or a advert, for something that seems like a good deal. I wouldn’t consider those things as an ‘attack’, but those messages are hitting thousands of people, and are loading the telecommunication company’s network, because they’re not targeting specific user, rather, the large masses.
Smishing (SMS phishing) – This type of attack is tricking the user to click on a hyperlink leading to a look-a-like website that looks like the real one, for example, a banking website, which upon login or signup the user is redirected to the real website, but their information that they’ve entered is in the scammer’s database.
Premium phone number attacks – There are types of number which, if you call, will charge you a varying fee both one time and per minute. This is called a premium phone number, because you’re paying premium to listen on the line. The attacks are often planned out for a specific companies, which have a lot of phones. The scammers split into into 2, one is the attacker, the one which needs to compromise the company’s phone line, and the receiver, which is the premium phone number. The attacker uses all the phone numbers in the company’s network to call this premium phone number, which results in a large fee at the end of the month for the company. The gain to all of this is that premium phone numbers receive a percent from the fee, which the phone company takes. Then the money that they got from the scam are split into two, for the attacker and the receiver.
Wangiri (One ring attack) – This attack is same as the premium phone number attack, but it relies on social engineering to trick the user to call the phone number. Again, they are 2 scammers involved, the attacker and the receiver, and the attacker calls for exactly one phone ring and dismisses the call. This is so that he does not pay fees for connecting to the victims. The victims see that they’ve missed a call from unknown number, and curious to call, they call the premium phone number and get fees.
