Transcript
Speaker: Could you imagine, right, the same we're saying that people don't want to pay up the phone? Like what happens if the flip side happens and people no longer want to use banks? And so I will say when people say like, oh, I don't pick up my phone or I don't answer my phone, like that's really, that's really scary to the telecom industry. So the motivation is there to fix the problem, right? It doesn't help though the problem keeps changing. And I think we're always a little bit behind the fraudsters from that perspective. But I do think it's Rebuilding that trust is going to be hard and then communicating that within the ecosystems we've built this level of trust that now you can trust it, right? Who then is going to be the one who comes forward and says, you can trust it now? Because as soon as we say that, what if a new thing comes up right? What if something else changes? So I think rebuilding that trust is going to happen a phone call and a message at a time.
Speaker: Okay, I'm very excited to have the conversation today with our Jamie Zitterstrom from Somos. And today we're going to start covering a little more in depth the telco industry and the parts that telco players can play in protecting consumers against online scams.
Speaker: Welcome to Scam Rangers, a podcast about the human side of fraud and the people who are on a mission to protect us. I'm your host Ayelet Bigger Levine and I'm passionate about driving awareness and solving this problem.
Speaker: So we'll start with Jamie. I'd love to hear about your career and your role at Somos. Great. And thank you so much for having me today. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming and sharing your insights with us.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, you know, you and I met in a very public place while we were getting ready to go on stage together. And i think in our conversations, there was a lot that came forward of of things that maybe other people should know. So i'll start with me. I'm Jamie Zetterstrom. I lead the product organization at a company called Somos.
Speaker: I've been in telecom now for a long time. and i think you get to this stage that you're like, I'm not going to do it. But literally from the time I got out of college, all my career, I've been at a version of telecommunications. And I love it. I love everything about it. And it's such an evolving and growing and changing industry. We have a very active Federal Communications Commission, FCC, right now. So there's a lot of moving pieces. There's a lot to keep up with.
Speaker: But yeah, so I i started telecom, like fresh out of college and maintained my like journey there. i started on the technology side, i went into the fraud fighting side, like actually led a fraud organization for a large carrier. And from there, kind of grew into products and solutions. And then I joined SOMOS about five years ago.
Speaker: A little bit about Somos. For those that don't know, Somos is the phone number administrator for all phone numbers in North America. And what that means is that carriers, like if you as a consumer, wanted to get a new phone number, wanted to get a phone, you think, oh, I go to my carrier or my phone store and I work with that carrier and get a number. Those numbers are all stored in different registries, depending on if it's a 10-digit phone number or if it's a toll-free number. And um we manage those registries on behalf of the FCC. In addition to that, um we also do a ah ton of other things. there' We also manage what's referred to as the reassigned numbers database. And this is very interesting that the Reassigned Numbers database is a system where when you no longer want a number, so you go and you disconnect to that telephone, right? Like you don't want that cell phone number or anything anymore. There's a database where that gets reported to.
Speaker: And that's really key because the Reassigned Numbers database is one of the components that were put in place in order to fight scams. um So we do handle the Reassigned Numbers database, we handle you know the toll-free registry, we handle the 10-digit dial registry. And then also we have products on another side of the house that serve more of the service providers and in enterprises. And that side of the business is global.
Speaker: um We have phone number phone number intelligence in about a little bit over 200 countries. um So depending on what you're looking for, where you want it to go, Somos has a ton of authoritative um and third-party ah data related to phone numbers. So when you think about like, I want to know something about a phone number, we're the shot talk to. you So I hope that's a a high level. That's amazing. And that I think that's really helpful for all the questions that I have today. Because, ah you know, obviously what you do is... is you know, management and intelligence. But one of the questions that I wanted to ask you kind of to set the stage and of course our focus is on scams. And typically I would say on this podcast, we talk a lot about the role of financial institutions and fighting scams and what financial institutions can think about. And we'll definitely touch on that today.
Speaker: But I actually want to focus mostly or or start our focus with telco, the telco industry and the telco industry's role. Because when we look at regulatory evolutions globally in the UK, when it came to um liability and reimbursements, the focus was on banking. And yes, telco is expected to play a part in solving the problem, but it wasn't so much money. a regulatory driver. in Australia, it is shared responsibility between telcos, banks, and social media companies or tech companies. ah But how much teeth does it have?
Speaker: Not yet. In Canada, looking at banks like the UK model right now, So I think the the first question is, is what is the role of telecom in all of this from a problem perspective? but Let's not talk about solutions right now, but where do scams meet to the telecom industry? ah As a user, I could say, yeah, of course, we get tech. messages all day long and the telcos um filter or or those messages go through the networks. So maybe start with where do scams meet or what where do telcos meet the scams? And be broad, definitely broader than Somos. You're our industry experts. I love that and thank you. um So yeah, I think you know from a telecom perspective, I think if we go back 10 years of where you know email was the mode of compromise to try to scam people, right? And if you talk to anyone back in the day, they would say, you know oh, yep, the the Nigerian prince sent me an email. And we nod and we smile and we understand and we're like, yeah, I remember that. And we all should have known then. It's just progressed. Right. So right now, telecom is that mechanism that allows that um entity, bad actor, fraudster, whatever terminology we want to use, criminal, I know is frequently used to get in contact. Right. And since everybody has a phone and everyone is on the phone and the phone is usually two centimeters away from you at all times, it's very easy. Right.
Speaker: Yep. And then you think about it. Mine's here. And then you think about, you know, okay, so then to your point, you know, if it's a text message, and then you get into if it's an RCS message or an MMS message, and these are all um acronyms that we can define and go through. but I think it's really important when we think about text messaging and phone calls and even email, right?
Speaker: Most people have email on their phone now too. Telecom's in the center of it, right? All of these things come come through telecom. And then it gets into, well, you know what? then Then telecom should stop it from happening, right? We should get it that somebody can't contact me.
Speaker: And then telecom kind of takes a deep breath and go, you know what? There there is onus. There's part of this that that is definitely on us. And there's definitely actions that we should be taking to prevent them from getting there. But i think the last thing, specifically in the United States, anyone wants is a telco provider reading your text messages, right? So how do you know if it's a legitimate text message or not a text message? How do you know, um you know, how do you scan without going through content, right? If you don't ask for intent at the time that a message is placed or a phone call is placed, like, how do we expect telecom to stop it from happening? Well, what happened in the email world, right? In the email world, we started to get all these firewall companies. We started to get all these products that were out there that were doing exactly that. You consent to have it the email screened and we'll check it. And if we think it's a safe and it has safe links in it, we'll send it through. What doesn't happen, right? That's not ah not a thing today. um In fact, where we were even just five years ago compared to where we are now, there's all these rules around can a phone call even be blocked from getting to an end user? And there's a ton of rules and regulation around that specifically, again, in the U.S. that I just think we have to take into consideration.
Speaker: Answer your question. Telcom's involved in all of it. But it's like when it comes to what do we do about it, I think there's a lot of things in our past that we cannot learn from and grow from. But Telcom isn't like watching it stand by. Like Telcom is active. and probably talk about that as we go through here. For sure. Yeah.
Speaker: To your point about ah filtering messages, i again, messages are filtered to some extent, right? We report bad messages to our carrier and we track that. And so what happens, maybe let's start with kind of broader and we'll get to that. But I did want to ask a few general questions before we dive into those details. um What has changed over the past or the the holistically, the scam problem, not going all the way back to emails, but in the era of SMS, you mentioned SMS, RCS, MMS. What has changed from a telecom perspective when it comes to scams? And I think you were right to also talk about other outlets of scams, if it's email or WhatsApp or other sorts of direct messaging.
Speaker: What has changed from a telecom's perspective? So, really great question. And I think the biggest change, and of course, one you this is my opinion, but I think the biggest change is that the bad actors, fraudsters, criminals, we refer to them as, realize that if they stay on one platform, whatever it is, that they're going to be found.
Speaker: And I think what's changed most drastically is that movement between platform. It's that change when the scammer is engaging even with one individual or if they have, you know, a bigger plot, right? They might not engage with five victims in the same way or start the conversation in the same way. So being able to like write down the anatomy of a particular scam and where it starts and where it comes in and what to look for you know, they've been really dynamic. They've made a lot of changes in there, specifically leveraging different pieces. Because the same way that, you know, people think of telecom as utility, it's not one big network divided up between different carriers. I mean, it is, there's a lot that goes into this. And there's not a lot of, um on purpose, there's not a lot of transparency between different sectors. So like it's one thing to say like, oh, you know, the phone network and oh, the messaging network. Like they're not the same. They're definitely not the same. Some of the players play in those environments. But I think, again, back to your question, I think the biggest thing that's changed is the um scammer bad actors approach to how they're trying to commit the compromise and they're jumping different platforms. Let it be in different types of messages. Yeah. In the past, they would just like spray and pray, right, with SMS. um And now we see, I've seen a lot of shift from SMS to iMessage. Of course, RCS is another one. So we'll get into that a little bit more. And just maybe to build on top of that, again, broader strokes. And I can't wait to dive into details. But what do you think people outside of the telecom industry most misunderstand about the industry's role in fighting scams?
Speaker: That's a really great question. And i I get asked it on almost every panel that I'm on because I'm usually in the financial sector at a financial conference. And the first thing I hear is telecom's not doing anything.
Speaker: And so I think that's a really, really big misconception. So I mentioned that we have a very active FCC right now. And I was actually on a panel and like came I can't think back to to where it was, but I was on a panel and i was like, really? I'm like, So in the telecom world, we have what's referred to as the robocall mitigation database, where anyone who's going to transfer traffic, phone messages, has to be registered.
Speaker: okay And when you do bad things, and when we find in the telecom industry, when we find that there's a bad actor out there, they could use their license to transmit traffic.
Speaker: And I go, what? If you're not in the Robocall Mitigation Database, then as a provider, we can't accept traffic from that particular carrier. So the the worst action that can happen, right, um from a, obviously I'm not talking about gel and I'm not talking about fines, but is having someone lose their ability to transmit data, right? let Ability to transmit calls, messages, all the parts of the telecom. And that's the removal of the Robocall Mitigation Database. And there's been thousands of
Speaker: of providers that have been removed from the verbal call mitigation database. Thousands. So it's not like telecoms just idling by and watching it. It's really tracing it back, tracing it forward, finding out what those sources are, building a case around it to say, get them, they they can't do this anymore. They are a bad actor at heart. Just to clarify, are these business phone numbers? It could be any phone number. Okay. Also individual consumer. yeah So what what I'm saying saying, when they get removed from the RoboCall mitigation database, I mean the carrier themselves. Okay. And the entity that... The carrier that has a high velocity of those types of malicious... Correct. it Proven that they have that... Proven that they're sending out bad traffic. Right.
Speaker: And so let's take a little technical detour here, ah because I think we need to set the the ground straight and and have the common understanding before we dive into the bigger questions that I have about um impact on trust and relationship with one's phone, et cetera, et cetera. But let's let's set the record. we all know about SMS. We all know um what MMS, i'm I'm assuming, which is the multimedia. It's also been very early on. I don't know. if is Does anyone use MMS anymore, I guess?
Speaker: Very, very. I mean, I'm sure. Right. I mean. um So to tell us a little bit about RCS, iMessage. I know there have been a lot of over the last few years, RCS originated from Google and iMessage from Apple and then the you know some protocols and some sharing. And so walk us through that a little bit and why it matters. Yep. um So iMessage, as we know, that's Apple's built-in kind of chat service where Apple devices can communicate with Apple devices, right? Its intent to be sent securely. um Sometimes it does have, you know, feature-rich parts of it. um Then there's RCS. And that RCS... Before RCS, just to be clear, the carriers do not have visibility into the content of iMessages, correct?
Speaker: Correct. Correct. Yeah. And so RCS, which is Rich Communication Services, it's supposed to replace the old SMS and MMS with, you know, high resolution media i'm telling you if somebody's read it, typing indicators so you know between different brands, like is this an i Android, is this an iPhone? So those are those are kind of the differences between, you know, RCS and iMessage. Now, you might say, well, you know, why why is that important, right, from a from a Just again, carriers have visibility into the content of the message? No. No.
Speaker: Because again, it's it's contained within that in that network. And I by no means, and I i should probably state that up front, I'm not a messaging specialist. I'm not a phone call specialist, right? um So, you know, if you said to me, oh, well, I actually know that there is a carrier in a rural area that has access to everything that goes over RCS and they built some proprietary thing. Awesome. I'm learning every day. But as far as from my perspective, that's not, today, that's not the case. And the the reason is when we talk to people, we say, hey, when you're, when you get a scam, you know, send it to 7726, right? Forward that to 7726. Or hit the button on your iPhone that says report as a scam. Because that's granting permission for those messages to then be sent and read. And in many cases, it's still not sent to the carrier. So 7726, just so you know, if you go on your phone and you look at the numbers, and that's what we called it in the past was you know spam because it was spamming everyone out there. And that then gives permission it to go to a carrier. Now, in those cases, the carrier actually isn't getting it in most most cases either. It's going to a vendor that is then scrubbing and looking for for information um to provide the carriers then to say, hey, you know, this is this looks like a bad actor. Now, in that case, it's looking for the same way that back in the day we did with email, but it's looking for certain um pieces and parts within that that text message to prove. Because what was happening in the past, especially with the people that are using the iPhone, when you click the, you know, spam or spam and report or block and report or people were just hitting the wrong thing. right And you never want it to be that those messages get blocked. And some people, you know they block their their ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend or ex-relationship, whatever. like You can't say the action from a consumer as a block is like, hey, this was meant to be. The intent was a scam or a spam or something. Yeah. There's there's a lot that goes into that, right, um from that perspective. you know But it's in that transaction when the carriers or their third-party vendors would have the ability to look at content, right? But you'd never want it that someone hit spam on a legitimate banking email and it contains some level of information that now ties that human and account number. And there's just so much involved in that. I don't need to tell the banking industry that. But there's so much involved with that that um that's that's why there's some installations put in place. Does that make sense? Yeah. And so it it actually leads me to a question that I've had in my mind for a long time.
Speaker: I feel like the telco industry has really been focused on spam, robocalls, spam messages, just, you know, the volume the sheer volume of bad messages being sent around and really filtering out. So, you know, by looking at volume from a certain number or volume of a certain message ah across the network and blocking those volume-based harassments that we've all received in the past and can see less of. And same for robocalls. Do you feel like there is focus on scams that are, you know, more subtle, more tailored?
Speaker: As you said, the the the tactics have changed. They're infused by AI. Now we have less of the bad grammar. do you feel like the telco industry is even looking at the problem differently or is it very focused on, you know, on and the bad actor phone takedown is also a game of whack-a-mole a little bit. So do you see the shift to scams in the industry? I see that the industry is embracing both, right? So there's a lot of rules. There's a lot of permissions. There's a lot of grants of what a telecom provider can do in the case of, to your point, like spam and robocalling, okay? Because it's it's what started, right? There's a term that i'll I'll teach your audience here if they don't know. It's something called neighbor spoofing. And people go, what? So neighbor spoofing is you have a specific area code on your phone and And all of a sudden you just keep getting messages from those same or phone calls from the same area code. Why? It's for you to be like, oh, it's got to be my neighbor. It's got to be the business I work with. It's got tot's got to be. I get that all the time. And now that I move to a different state, I know it's nobody that I need to be talking to. Exactly. Exactly. So neighbor spoofing is out there.
Speaker: The telecom industry is constantly watching that. Now, when you move into the scam world, it's It's much more surgical, like you were saying. It's not, you can't put volumes in there to try to track it. It's really challenging when you think about it. And so what telecom has done is they're very active. There's a ton of organizations out there that have these working groups where there are, and and the financial industry has been really vocal in this area, where there's some information sharing in order to help find where those are coming from. So for instance, one of the working groups that I'm in is called the Communications Fraud Control Association, also known as the CFCA.
Speaker: Banking institutions are invited to join that. There's a ton of telecoms in there. And we have what's called the MOW session. So MOW is spelled like K-N-O-W, so knowledge. And in there, we bring up like, hey, what are you facing today? And people will talk about different areas of of what they're seeing from a scam perspective. We spend 90% of that time, and it's every two weeks, talking about um talking about scams. Everyone that's involved in that organization will hop on the phone with you and talk through a scam. The ultimate goal is to find where are they coming from. Because the thing a carrier can do is say, I'm not going to accept traffic from from that particular entity. Let it be voice messaging, whatever it is. so I don't think we've changed shift as an industry. I think we've now layered it in to another level of of frauds that we need to look for. And I think when we can fight it with a lot of the tools in the telecom belt that we have for robocalling, great. And when it's not and we need some new tools, that's where this is like a really active and evolving area right now. And one of the things that we keep hearing, i keep hearing and in kind of cross-industry meetings is what about just simply notifying the user that the call that appears to be local is actually from overseas as an indicator of this might be a spoof number?
Speaker: And i i I keep hearing mixed like that there's it's technically impossible or it's not possible because we you have so many call centers abroad. So can you shed some light on that issue? Yeah, there was actually a ah pretty lengthy um notice of proposed rulemaking and PRM. The financial industry and the telecoms all actively responded to in relation exactly that.
Speaker: um Because there are other countries out there that have said, we don't allow anyone that's outside of our country walls to call into our country. Like Australia. Well, not that they can't call, but there's the the receiver will get an indication that this is a call from. But it came from outside.
Speaker: Yes. And the U.S. does have some rules in there about when you can present a U.S. number. But to your exact point about, you know, call centers overseas, I mean, that is that is ah a real use case. There are a ton of businesses that have their call centers outside of the walls of the United States America.
Speaker: Absolutely. and And what does that signal then say to the end user that it just came out from, know, from another country? Is that enough to give the user enough information? Right. And there's two schools thought on that. There's like, well, as a consumer, I just want to know. And on the other hand, you have consumers that don't answer the phone regardless. Right. So, you know, wouldn't it be better to give as many signals as possible to that consumer at the time of a call?
Speaker: And there are commercial products out there that leverage a bunch of signals in the telecommunications ecosystem that that can do just that, right? That can can give the consumer a signal. But what's different? I think the thing is, how do you get it to every operating system, on every device, to every human in the old system? And I think when people say it's technically impossible, I think you're a technologist. I think we believe that nothing's impossible. right But to get the reach and the growth that you have to from all the players that are here, from you know who built the device, what is the operating system, what carrier is it on? like All of those things are different factors. When you put that into a chart, it's there's it's just huge. Right. and And to that end, if it's if fit's that big, right, how how challenging would it be to be able to go out to market to be like, hey, as I'll say Apple, as Apple, if you have an Apple device, we're going to tell you if it's a scammer on the phone.
Speaker: that's That's really hard because of all the other pieces that are in the middle. So what does someone do? Okay, if you're an Apple subscriber that's on version dot, dot, dot, dot dot and you happen to use this carrier and you're in this section of the United States, we'll tell you when it could be a scam, right? I mean, that's really hard. And then think about the natures of scams, romance scams. Like, how do you how how do you say, like, there's there's a scam going on here, right? Like, how honestly, how can you do that when the communication isn't just one direction, right? It's two directions. Yeah, yeah, no, definitely this the spoofing is for specific types of scams or cam scams that either initiate in a phone call or continue, to your point earlier, about changing platforms all the time is part of the scam. It won't solve for everything, but it will solve for a big number of, because what happens many times is that the criminal will try to get and talk to the the victim and have the conversation with them because they want to start manipulating them more in depth. So it's much easier to have a phone conversation. Of course, they could do it on other platforms as well, not just phone. But it's more believable if it's a government impersonation scam to create this phone session with them. And if we had an indication that this call is coming from outside or overseas, not to say, of course, there are many criminals in the U.S. as well, scamming people. But it could solve for a lot, and not cover everything. I don't think that's the expectation.
Speaker: Yeah, no, i I understand that it's complicated. I'm just wondering what can be done to you know, that that that would be a big leap. and And the fact that there are countries that managed to do it. And I think we all know it's more complex here. We have Lots lots of people, lots of companies. It's a different set of playing, you know, rules that we need to play by. But I hope we get to a solution on this matter as well. I agree. And and just to said double down on that complexity, most people in the United States use one of three carriers, right, for for their mobile devices. Let's just talk mobile network for right now. um We know that there is, um those are called MNOs, mobile network operators. There's also mobile, there's also a virtual networks. So they their network is leveraged for others, right? Those carriers are most likely, in almost every case, not the carrier that accepted the call that came overseas when it got into the United States. So now you're playing and it's literally referred to as the telephone game of where did that come from? and And to get that signal to that terminating, because you want the signal on the terminating, but the call came in the United States, it could be five carriers before the actual terminating provider. So that's where it gets complicated. And I'm not saying that it's not solvable. It's okay, but it's first identifying and having a way to pass it. And then the next part is displaying it.
Speaker: Before we get back to the conversation, i wanted to share something we believe deeply at Rangers AI. The future of fraud prevention isn't just about detecting suspicious transactions. It's about giving people the confidence to make safer decisions before money moves.
Speaker: Every day, customers receive texts, emails, phone calls, and messages that look legitimate. By the time the trans transaction reaches the bank, the customer may already have been manipulated.
Speaker: And that's why we built ScamRanger. ScamRanger helps people evaluate digital communications in real time, understand the warning signs of scams, and know what to do next. It empowers customers to make important decisions while giving financial institutions another layer of insight and protection. Because the strongest defense against scams isn't just better technology. It's building scam resilience one decision at a time.
Speaker: Now let's get back into the conversation.
Speaker: So it's important to lay that technical foundation to you know to understand what what the what the playing field is. But I think one of the question one of the topics I wanted to get into is trust. And we both participated in the launch of the Gallup survey that talked about, that investigated or or did a comprehensive survey on people in the US who are facing different types of scams and really tried to understand both the volume and the emotional impact of scams on individuals. So according to Gallup, 15% of scams start with a phone call, but phone calls are involved at some point in 45% of the scams, to your point earlier, where they they do change their interactions over time from text to phone, WhatsApp, et cetera. So telecom might not always be there and then the scam starts, but it's often where relationship does develop.
Speaker: um And we talked about it's hard to stop a scam before oftentimes, but how can telecom intervene nonetheless? What are the opportunities? Maybe that's the bigger question for telecom to do more to intervene in the scam economy.
Speaker: Yeah, I love that you refer to it as a scan of scam economy because we all talk about scamonomics. And actually, you know, growing that out and understanding that. So from a telecom perspective, it really depends on which what question we're trying to answer. Right. So we started talking about preventing that text message or that call in conversations that we have with financial institutions. They're like, give me enough information so that I, as the financial institution, can stop the transaction. Right. We're looking at money based scams. Right. So I think there's multiple ways. There's multiple approaches. There's multiple pieces of information, also known as signals. Right. That can be given to kind of aid in where are we able to do this? You know, what can we do that's consumer facing? What can we do that's, you know, inter-industry facing? What can we do that's, you know, cross-industry facing? in order to to disrupt a scam from happening, right? And the Gallup survey was talking about individual consumers and how they were affected financially, right? And, you know, in a lot of cases, we say that most of the scams people don't report, but we also say that in most cases, people go, yeah, it wasn't for financial gain.
Speaker: Maybe it was for like information gain, right? Because those scams are out there too. So I just think it's multiple prongs that that telecom can get involved in, right? It really depends on who the audience is and what problem we're trying to solve. Right. And I'll talk about trust a little more in a second, but you start talk about information sharing with financial institutions. So what are some opportunities that you see there that could really change the game? I think you had a lot of, inra you know, a lot of ideas there. Yeah. So, for instance, one of the one of the groups that I work with, we have a bunch of financial institutions involved in that. And them sharing with each other has been monumental. First, we'll start there. Because as much as we're saying like, hey, it's not robocalling anymore, it's more surgical, it's also that if they find a way that works compromising bank A's customers, it might work compromising bank B's customers. At the same time, because this has now become a, hey, let's make sure that we have, you know, ah products and services out there. There are certain things that very large financial institutions can purchase to help protect their consumers that maybe a smaller institution can. And vice versa. There might be not cost, but ease to deploy. Deploying something at a large institution might be really hard hard in a small and a smaller institution. So I think, you know, from that perspective and that information sharing, having the financial institutions go, wow, this is hitting a big bank and a small credit union. That's really great information. to know that it's so you know coming out of one geographic area, knowing the phone number is affiliated with that, sharing that basis. I'm not talking now the message. we're not talking the contents of the phone call. We're talking about the physical phone number, which we treat as you know as the phone number administrator is key, giving that key and communicating that key. And you might go, well, what if it's spoofed? Great, right? If it is, if that number is spoofed and it sends a text message and says, call us back at this other number, that other number becomes really important, right? So it's all around, you know, kind of where that's coming from where, what what the end game is from a scammer perspective. But information sharing, getting that phone number to telecom is really, really step one and really helpful because there's a ton of signals around that phone number. Hope that helps. Yeah.
Speaker: And from a regulatory perspective, what are the barriers right now for doing that, for sharing that type of information? Yeah. So it's a really great question. So a lot of times and and almost all of the information sharing that that we we do, um it's tied to an organization that has rules around it that say like you're doing it for the intent of catching a fraudster, right? Doing a criminal. So, you know, when I go to financial conferences, I hear all about, you know, 314B, which is like how, you know, financial institutions are what they can do. And telecom, we have the Trust Act and we have section 222D that allows telecoms to communicate.
Speaker: Now, I think we're all leaning into working groups that allow all of us under. Cross-industry sharing. Yeah, to cross-industry share. Exactly. You have to have that safe harbor that when you're sharing it, you're you're doing it under the pretense that you're trying to fight for it. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to hearing the results and outcomes of that and regulation changing to allow that safe harbor. That's, you know. Very, very urgent. OK, so let's go back to trust, because I think we have a big trust issue. I think I shared this a few times ah in talking to a victim support group, talking about how we can help them protect themselves against online scams. Someone said to me, i don't look at my phone anymore. I don't answer my calls.
Speaker: I don't communicate via texts. um She lost trust in unknown communicators. And I'm sure she's missing important messages that she needs to be receiving from i medical or whatever um other. And so we've reached a point where many people don't trust calls anymore and don't ah nobody answers their phone anymore. That's a common thing. um So how do we rebuild that trust?
Speaker: That's a great question. i think to rebuild it with consumers, I think we have to rebuild it within the ecosystems themselves, right? So understanding what each firm is doing. Because could you imagine, right, the same way we're saying that people don't want to pick up the phone? Like what happens if the flip side happens and people no longer want to use banks?
Speaker: or people don't really, you know, and, and you know, that's ah that's a really scary thing. And so I will say when people say like, oh, I don't pick up my phone or I don't answer my phone, like that's really that's really scary to the telecom industry. So the motivation is there to fix the problem, right? It doesn't help that the problem keeps changing. You know, it keeps evolving, keeps moving on. And I think we're always a little bit behind ah the fraudsters from that perspective. But I do think it's, you know, when you think about it it it's,
Speaker: rebuilding that trust is going to be hard and then communicating that within the ecosystems we've built this level of trust that now you can trust it, right? Who then is going to be the one who comes forward and says, you can trust it now? Because as soon as we say that, what if a new thing comes up, right? What if something else changes? So I i think, you know, rebuilding that trust is going to happen a phone call and a message at a time. I think the industry is really keen on doing that and and And, you know, changing where we're at, the status quo is not okay. We all believe that and it's getting there. So I think step one is build it within the ecosystems where, you know, maybe financial information and financial calls and financial things take this super highway of trust panel path that's that's more has more protection around it than, say, um when you're communicating ah person to person. Right. And that's the messaging space has done a little bit of that, um differentiating, you know, who's the originator and where is that terminator? What does that look like? And the rules around that and safeguards around that. So we've we've seen over direct messaging the evolution of kind of trusted, we have shortcodes. And now we have trusted businesses. And so that's evolving. I know it's not perfect. I know that still criminals can get short codes and criminals can definitely not use short codes and try to convince that they're still trusted entity. But yeah, definitely um that path of trusted authorities is important, but also requires consumer education.
Speaker: So when we talk about consumers, we never talk about consumers here. What is the role of consumers in this? And because I am a true believer in we need to empower consumers to protect themselves. That's kind of my mantra. and That's what we do at Rangers AI. We help financial institutions empower customers to protect themselves because They interact with the scam. They have context that we don't have.
Speaker: They have knowledge about what happened before, what happened now, when I'm interacting with a criminal on the telco, on the banking side and the payment. And so what has the role, from your perspective, um that consumers can play to help telcos do a better job? Yeah, um I think report.
Speaker: and and And I know that's so hard um because when they've taken advantage of, they move from consumer to victim and saying like, oh, we just we need every victim to report. Sounds a little tone deaf, right? Sounds a little like maybe we're not hearing the problem overall. I would say that clarity on what happens when we report is is is going to really be helpful. and A lot of people ask me, what happens when we report to the telcos? And I honestly don't know. So if we had more clarity on what happens, I think a lot more people would want to... People want to... not saying everybody's going to report. We know scams are underreported for many reasons, but people all went... that go through this are also mad and they want to not, they don't want it to happen again. So I think the motivation, just just report the message is there, but the clarity on what happens when reporting happens could be better.
Speaker: note to telcos. Taken. And I think telcos also want there to be a feedback loop to be able to go back to because you reported this, this happened. Yeah. Right. Amazing. So, it yes, I i think and everyone's listening. It's not that the telcos are like, no, we don't don't don't bother about like, it's OK. You don't have to report it. Like, no, we want every piece of information that a consumer is willing to give us. Right. We are fighting this.
Speaker: At the business level right now, because businesses are like my consumers, joint group, um were affected by X. And that gives us a lot of information, too. But to your point, there's some nuances that happen with the human at the end.
Speaker: um the The consumer, they unfortunately, end up being victim. That would be a lot of knowledge for telco. Absolutely. So if you had a crystal ball and you could go a few years, I'm not going to even say five because today five is we can't imagine a year from now what's going happen. But if you had a crystal ball and realistically, what does good look like? from your perspective in the telco's role in the fight against scams? what What do you think could happen within a year or two? Yeah, I think there's there's a lot right now in front of the FCC. There's a lot of options and paths and recommendations that they can take, um all focused around, you know, ah businesses knowing their customer and businesses knowing who the upstream providers are that are being leveraged. So, um you know, with a crystal ball, there's a lot in front of the FCC right now. Know your upstream provider, know your customer. And, you know what could happen in the next year or two years is coming up with a trusted way to be able to communicate when a brand is communicating. So when I say a brand, think of it as a bank, a credit union, whatever. when they want to communicate to an end user what that path is. I reference like a superhighway, but like, you know, really building some support and structure around this is how you say this is them.
Speaker: This is that proof in identity, right? Because this is an identity problem. the end of the day, this is an identity problem. Like, um so I think that's probably the chip away one. I think the longer pull struggles are going to be the human to human scamming that takes place where there isn't an entity involved.
Speaker: I think those are going to be harder and and down the road. So in the one to two years, I think there's going to be some tightening around kind of that brand protection, that inability. You mentioned spoofing, inability to impersonate. You mentioned government scams like there's going to be some tightening around that. That's going to absolutely happen in the next 12 to 24 months. Amazing.
Speaker: So first of all, I wanted to thank you so much for being a host, shedding light on that perspective of telco industry, which is, um you know, not something that we talk about on the podcast every day. So thank you for that. And maybe one last question. um What are you most optimistic about in this fight against games? Yeah. Well, first, thank you for having me. I know we talked for hours over a dinner. I know we you know we're going back and forth in email. I know we we really feel like we got to know each other. And you were like, you know the people who listen to the podcast need to hear this because they don't hear all the time. So I really appreciate you you know bringing it forward. And I'm happy to answer questions whenever about telecom. From an optimistic perspective, I do believe that everyone is really focused on um the problems that are surrounding it.
Speaker: I do think that there are active, you know, conferences, working groups, communications, teams that are just dedicated to this, right? Just thinking about even what your podcast does from, you know, highlighting different scam rangers that are out there. Like, I just think it's really, I'm just so optimistic that there are so many good actors out there that really want to make a difference. And i think we're we're we're a couple of really great inventions away from being able to build those trust highways along along the way. Right. And so I am optimistic. I'm optimistic that we've all recognized what battle we're fighting. We've recognized kind of where some of the perpetrators are. We found tools to find them in certain conditions. And I just think it's going to snowball from there. We're just going to get better and better and better at it and um and and see the needle move in the protection against consumers. Amazing. I think, yeah, you're absolutely right. We're putting energy on this. We're putting attention. And so we will
Speaker: Thank you, Jamie, so much again. And looking forward to having you in the future again on Scam Rangers. Thank you. Thank you.
