As telecommunication fraud continues to grow each year, with reported losses in 2021 of $383 million in Canada¹ and $30 billion in the United States², it's becoming increasingly important to stay informed and vigilant. Total telecom-related losses in 2021 amounted to $39.89 billion, a 28% increase from 2020. Of those total losses, $4 billion were at the hands of a scam called Short Stopping.

Short Stopping refers to a scam where hackers hijack a call before it reaches its target destination. By working with a rogue carrier on the call's path, the hacker redirects the call to an expensive destination country, causing the victim to get surcharged. The hackers and the rogue carriers then share the revenue generated by the fraudulent calls by billing either the end customer or another carrier in the routing flow.

Once a call has been short-stopped, the motivation of the hacker becomes to keep the caller on the line for as long as possible. The longer the call, the higher the charge. To this end, scammers use a number of different tactics.

Potential Tactics to Watch Out For

• Providing a false ring tone or a fake network announcement that might say something like, "The person you are calling has not responded. Please try again later." • Playing a prerecorded message such as, "Hello? Hello? I can't hear you. Hold on…" • Rerouting the call to a call center where a real person attempts to keep the conversation going with similar tactics.

How Short Stopping Impacts Callers

Because these recordings or conversations are meant to seem legitimate, callers are often not even aware that any fraud has taken place until they receive an exorbitant bill for calls to a destination they never dialed. A further inconvenience is that some operators will block the numbering plans of costly countries altogether in order to protect themselves from this scam. This makes customers who legitimately need to reach these countries unable to do so.

Why Short Stopping is Difficult to Stop

Short Stopping is difficult both to detect and crack down upon because the fraud happens after a legitimate call is placed. The fraudulent element of the call is able to conveniently hide within the initial legitimate call, allowing it to go unnoticed by the systems put in place to catch it. It is especially difficult to track because the per-call profit margin is so small that it goes unnoticed. Unfortunately, the millions of small-scale calls being hijacked on a global scale allow the fraudsters' cumulative profits to add up substantially. To put it simply, detecting Short Stopping is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

How SIPSTACK Fights Fraud

Using the latest technology and machine learning, SIPSTACK's systems authenticates all activity in real time against variables that affect your security. When a carrier implements SIPSTACK's Risk Rating Score, they are able to customize a threshold for calls to pass through, based on their specific needs. At SIPSTACK we take an active role in ensuring we are building a secure and connected tomorrow. Contact us today to learn how you can protect yourself from spam.

References

^{1https://www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/index-eng.htm
2 https://firstorion.com/2021-scam-call-trends/}