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World-wide, credit card fraud and other scams cost the public billions of dollars. While credit card fraud is the clear leader in sheer volume of money lost, "regular scams" still result in a significant amount of money being lost each year. Globally, credit card fraud resulted in losses of US$21.84 billion in 2015. The so-called "Nigerian scam", usually perpetrated via email, totalled US$12.7 billion in 2013. Overall losses are likely to be much larger however, as many scams go unreported.
While scams that come in over email are increasingly being picked up by spam filters, around 45% of scams in Australia (and likely other countries) are by phone and text message.
Email spam filters are using machine learning techniques to get better at identifying the wide range of scams that can arrive in inboxes. This is by far the most effective way of dealing with scams, as the average member of the public has been shown to be remarkably susceptible. However, very little has been done about phone and text scams. This is surprising given scammers have quite brazenly stuck to using the same number or area codes over significant periods of time.
[...] Google and Apple should, however, be able to do more independently of these agencies. With the advent of machine learning techniques being used to analyse emails, it will be also possible to apply the same technology to phone calls.
[...] The list of other scam types is fairly consistent, and so is identifiable by software interpreting the conversation in real time. Governments should apply pressure on companies like Apple and Google to tackle this problem. Until then however, it is worth using one of the third party apps (like: TrueCaller, Hiya ) to ward off scams.
Do you have suggestions on how these scams could be stopped ?
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday June 27 2017, @12:43PM (1 child)
Pretty much, the system wasn't designed with the idea that computers would exist someday to make everything easier.
The spoofed Caller ID is just a field you fill in on most PBXes. I could claim 1-111-111-1111 was my number if I wanted to.
There's no actual centralized database of all phone numbers. Everything's stored in separate relative databases. It's not super easy to figure out the precise owner of a number sometimes, and sometimes things get confused (like more than one company thinking they own a number).
Thing is, there's a lot of people, for good reasons and bad, that like the system as-is and/or don't want the government to touch it. The government has a habit of not doing much helpful in this field beyond what a layperson can understand.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27 2017, @02:41PM
The government has a habit of not doing much helpful in this field beyond what a layperson can understand.
The average layperson can easily understand "nuke from high orbit", and offering to apply it
to telemarketers, or indeed any kind of cold caller, is likely to be the single most effective way of
getting elected to high office ever proposed.
Indeed, if ISIS were to propose mass murder of telemarketers, they would probably
get elected to office in the USA.