1 consumer complaint that we receive," says Patty Hsue, an attorney who leads the FTC's effort against robocalls. The FTC is trying to combat the rising number of illegal automated phone calls. "When the call center agent asks him a particular question, the way he answers, the pauses that he takes, all of that is a work of art as compared to someone going after the smaller-sized accounts."īalasubramaniyan says while Pindrop has shared this information with its clients, he does not know if they are pursuing criminal investigations. "The fraudster who's attacking the $100,000-and-more account has so much information at his disposal, he's done so much research on the account, that he's flawless on his call," Balasubramaniyan says. If a bank account has a larger credit line, it goes to one particular fraudster who's particularly adept at manipulating call center operators. The ring, nicknamed "West Africa One," has a dozen members according to Pindrop. The startup has gathered millions of samples from call centers and, based on analysis of unique callers and devices, Balasubramaniyan believes his team has identified a specific criminal group in Nigeria. Pindrop declined to name its clients, because of nondisclosure agreements, but it says three of the four biggest banks use its services. Balasubramaniyan says your best bet is to make sure the number you're calling matches the number on the back of your credit or debit card, or the bank's website. There's no similar tool available for the average person. So an operator can tell, Balasubramaniyan says, "this call is supposed to come from a landline in Atlanta, but the audio is telling us it's a Skype call from West Africa." Pindrop has a tool that puts about 147 clues together and rates how trustworthy the caller is in real time. The specific device you use (Samsung Galaxy, MacBook Air, for example) and the voice itself give additional clues. The size of the break varies, by country and by network conditions. If a packet gets lost, you get a break in the audio. Internet-based phone services divide your voice into little packets, wrap them up and ship them across the network. There are long breaks in his voice when he says, "I'd like to know the available credit in my account." Now, there are clues that the guy calling isn't legit. The caller says, "OK, can you help me update my address today?" and he proceeds to take over the account. "Got it," the operator says, eager to provide good customer service. The caller, who is pretending to be the account holder, wants to know his available credit - to make sure the account is worth pursuing. In a real-life example, provided by one call center, the operator has a hard time hearing the caller and apologizes. Banks and credit card companies hire Pindrop to help them detect fraud. Once the criminal ring scrapes enough information on you, it has humans call your financial institution. If you call back from somewhere else, you get "this number has been deactivated." So a regulator or police officer that's trying to crack down will think, incorrectly, it's out of commission. If you call back from your phone - which the criminals dialed - you get the prompt to enter personal data. And they've observed an interesting detail about the fraudulent 1-877 numbers. Workers enter the numbers into sweepstakes and online databases, to see what kind of fraud hits.Ĭompany researchers estimate 1 in every 2,200 calls is a fraud attempt. Pindrop keeps a "honeypot" - about a quarter-million phone numbers that aren't being used by real people, which the company uses for research. Balasubramaniyan recalls, "They're like 'OK, if you want a moment to process this, we're going to send the law enforcement in front of your doorstep.' "
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