Did You Ever Wonder How to Effectively Fight VoIP Fraud?
Are there some tips about fast detection of VoIP fraud company?
VoIP transit is a high risk business, you often deal with companies established for international activity, provided from the countries with strong government regulation, so, they are all situated in well-known offshore countries like Cyprus, Panama, Belize etc.
Sometimes the registration country of such companies gives a chance to them not to pay for the services, because it is totally impossible to find real shareholders and owners of the company.
Such company often acts like this:
there is a blind detection of possible victim by asking different VoIP transit providers to route the traffic and pay in 1 months after the traffic has been sent;
the network of VoIP transit provider is flooded with 100000 of minutes with the selling price 0.05 and buying price 0.048. It totals 5000 USD of income;
on the moment the company needs to pay an invoice it is closed;
In case of company fraudulent closure the profit is 5000-700 = 4300 USD. 700 is a price for opening another offshore company, and you open it the same day to continue this activity. If you pay for all the traffic, the profit will be noticeable: 100000*(0.05-0.048)=200 USD.
You can protect yourself before such a company steals your money. How? Continue reading. I will help you.
The most strong defence from fraud in VoIP is prepaid. If you work with your partners on prepaid, then there is almost no chance, that you will be fooled. Buy be patient. You should give to the partner exact amount of services, which were prepaid. Not more. Tune your billing system correct, otherwise your partner will use more services, but can have a chance not to pay a difference.
Selling services on prepaid is rather hard in VoIP, especially if you’re a new company just emerged on the market, so, you should really hire an anti-fraud specialist or learn how to check your partners by yourself.
Below you will find a short check-list, which has been created in UcallWeconn and gives you the idea of how to identify a company, which can perform fraudulent activity.
Go Google and search for a company name
1. Try to google a company name, the name of the manager, which has connected with you, his contact details like IM number, mail address, the address of the company. Try to look first 2-3 pages in search engines results pages to see if the company or manager were mentioned somewhere. If never mentioned, then it is a bad sign.
Check VoIP Fraud List
2. Quickly jump to VoIP forums and fraud-list, try to look for the name of the manager or the company, which have contacted you, there, may be Google doesn’t have any info, because they are new, but already fooled somebody.
You Can Send Your Tech Form
3. Ask your new partner, who wants to establish relations, to fill the tech form. Use your partner’s softswitch IP-address to know who is providing IP-connectivity to them and possible, who is a co-location provider. Then you can do the following: call to these service providers and ask for references. Check if the client has its own AS number. Autonomous system is a good sign of the big reliable establish company with long term aims.
Check the Website
4. Ask your new partner for an URL of their website. A good and reliable company should have it. The website should be properly designed, have company contacts and product descriptions. The more products the company has, the more reliability points it scores.
Do Not Reply to e-mails From Public e-mail Services Like gmail or Yahoo
5. Be suspicious to those people, who write from yahoo or gmail e-mail address. Often it can mean, that a company even didn’t dare to arrange own mail service, so, they don’t treat well their presence in the Internet and may be don’t plan to stay there for a long time.
The Desire to Start Two Way Trade
6. Talk with your future partner about routes, they have. Give them some 2-3 routes with price which is higher than market price. If that company still wants to buy it, it should make you attentive and suspicious. The company, which has contacted you should also desire not only to buy from you, but also sell. Looking for new clients and being suspicious to you is a good sign from your partner.
Is There a Wish To Sign NDA
7. While asking for references you can get the answer, that a company cannot give references to another company because of NDA signed between them. NDA is not so good, when you like to get information, but it can be a good sign of well-established company with a defined rules and procedures.
Does Your Partner Has a Telecom License in the Country of Residence?
8. A company, who has a telecom license in their country of residence is a very good sign.
Check the Membership in Organizations, Exchanges, Conferences
9. Ask you partner on which conference you can meet personally and have a short talk about coming business. A company, which actively participates in events like GTM, Capacity, CNX by Ancotel can be treated as a reliable business-partner.
Your Partner is Looking for Good Quality Premium Routes
10. Companies with well established business trade not only wholesale quality traffic, they also look for premium termination, with CLI and faxes pass through.
Check Physical Office
11. One of the indicators, that you deal with a serious business, is that this business has a physical office with chairs, tables, computers and people.
The author of the article works in UcallWeconn. UcallWeconn is a provider of international calls termination on residential, enterprise and wholesale markets.
