Combating the Wangiri fraud via the 3air platform

It’s not every day that a missed call leads to a scam, but that’s what happens when one is about to become a victim of the Wangiri fraud. It usually starts with the phone ringing once and disconnecting, leaving a missed call from an unknown international number. The scam originates from Japan, and ‘Wangiri’ means ‘one ring and cut.’ 

To reduce the odds of the call getting answered, scammers call at night or during premium working hours. They also typically call more than once to make their victims call back. People who fall for this scam end up being charged hundreds of dollars when they unknowingly return calls to premium-rate numbers which charge high fees. The service provider receives a portion of the fee, and the remaining goes to the scammer. 

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The impact of the Wangiri fraud

The Wangiri fraud has a significant impact on users and telecommunication service providers. In 2020, fake calls accounted for more than two million of the overall statistics in the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, and Spain, costing millions of dollars. In addition, the Communications Fraud Control Association (CFCA) reported losses from the Wangiri fraud reached $1.82 billion in 2019. Scammers favor this scheme because it is easy and cheap.

Telecommunication service providers regularly update their fraud management database. However, scammers always look out for security loopholes, and the absence of real-time fraud detection facilities is an obvious flaw. Fraudsters hack these telecom systems and redirect the high rates to themselves. 

The Wangiri fraud is one of the top five fraud schemes in telecom, causing comparable amounts of financial losses to payment fraud, PBX hacking, and IP PBX hacking.      

How does 3air prevent the Wangiri fraud?

Blockchain technology offers the ideal solution to prevent the Wangiri fraud. It provides a trustless environment with integrity, transparency, and high security at its core. 

3air is a connectivity and blockchain platform designed to provide affordable broadband services and prevent fraudulent activities. In addition, the 3air platform provides additional utilities such as decentralized technologies like digital identities, service tokenization, and IoT. 

Most people choose easy passwords and use them on multiple platforms. Additional security methods like code authentication via email or SMS also have limitations and many vulnerabilities. Scammers could hack SIM cards or steal phones to access users’ accounts and data.      

Digital identities (DIDs) are unhackable compared to traditional authentication methods. 3air will collaborate with service providers and offer identity-as-a-service. DIDs are useful for the user and service provider because every interaction is authorized by the user and recorded on a decentralized ledger. Any Wangiri fraud attempt becomes difficult to perpetrate, and service providers can easily detect and trace them in no time.      

DID adoption will take time. However, through education about blockchain wallets and proper private keys storage, the average user can shield themselves against fraudulent activities successfully.  

Conclusion

There are many fraudulent schemes in the telecommunications space, and users and service providers lose billions of dollars to these activities. Integrating 3air and its digital identity technology reduces financial losses and secures sensitive data. Telecom service providers will have a robust fraud management system using 3air because the data is exchanged, verified, and recorded in real-time and on an immutable ledger.