What is Toll Fraud?

Toll fraud, often called VoIP fraud or telephony fraud, is an illegal activity whereby a hacker accesses your telephone system and makes lots of fraudulent, long distance calls to premium rate numbers using your account.

Telephony fraud is a global problem, costing businesses £36bn in losses each year. It should be considered a threat to any business; small or large. Your telephony services and data are a valuable and important asset.

Our telephone systems and telephony solutions have all of the expected security measures and applications built-in, but unless you apply them properly and train your staff to use them correctly, they cannot deliver the best deterrent to this world-wide threat.


‍

What are the warning signs?

Here are a few warning signs of toll fraud.

• Calls to numbers you don’t recognise on your call logs - often international numbers.

• An increase in the number of calls made after business hours.

• Phone lines in use for extended periods when no one else is on the phone.

• An unusually high level of incoming calls from the same source - possibly an automated call trying to hack a mailbox.
  
  
  ‍

Can I stop it?

You can help prevent toll fraud.

Toll fraud is a very serious problem. But here are some important steps you can take to help prevent fraudsters from accessing your system.

Strong voicemail passwords
You should always have a strong password on your system voicemail. A password such as 0000 or 1234 is insufficient and weak. Be sure to regularly update and refresh your voicemail password to ensure the highest level of security.

International calling restrictions
Fraudsters use your system to make international calls to premium numbers. A good preventative measure for you to take is to set a restriction limit to the international calls your system can make. This helps prevent the fraudster raking up big bills. (Give us a call and we'll help you on this one)

Monitor your call logs
You should always keep track of your call logs. By regularly reviewing call traffic to and from your business, you are able to spot anomalies which could be fraudulent. Commsplus recommend reviewing your call logs a minimum of once a week - if not once a day.

Inform employees
Your system is only as strong as its users. Ensure all your employees know what toll fraud is and how they can help prevent it. We recommend having a voicemail password policy in place that tells all staff to change their voicemail password regularly. You may already have a similar policy for computer login passwords - this should be extended to your telephone system.

Still uneasy about it?

It's okay - we're here to help.

Even if all these precautions are in place, there is still slight chance that fraudsters will find a way into your system.

The ensuing phone bill can cost a company thousands of pounds. Therefore, we have invested in toll fraud prevention. Our platform uses artificial intelligence to monitor your call activity on a daily basis. It looks for call patterns, anomalous numbers and call data that does not fit your normal business criteria.

When it detects such activity we take action to contact you and alert you to the situation. Our platform can save you thousands if fraud does occur.

If we are unable to contact you, because the fraud is happening over a weekend for example, we can put measures in place to to automatically put a call bar on your lines to prevent fraudsters making any more fraudulent calls using your system.

We only charge 25p + vat per line for this service.

If you would like to have a chat to us about fraud prevention please give us a call on 01934 882200.

If you think you have been a victim of toll fraud, you should contact our support team as soon as possible on 01934 882222.


‍