Answering the Call from Legitimate Businesses Globally: Uncovering the Issues - Part 1

In today’s global marketplace, many businesses continue to rely on foreign-originated phone calls to cost-effectively reach their customers. While the U.S. and Canada aim to protect both consumers and businesses from fraudulent calls via standards such as the Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (STIR) and SHAKEN (Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs) framework, some valid phone numbers from overseas are inadvertently flagged as spam. Not only does this impede legitimate inbound calls from other countries from reaching the recipient, but it also financially impacts these businesses and disenfranchises consumers who want to engage with them. 

We sat down with TNS’s Director of Product Management, Bob Grant, to discuss the authentication of inbound phone calls that cross country borders. In the first part of the interview, Grants discusses how to ensure the delivery of these calls and the issues that need to be addressed so that legitimate businesses can continue to rely on the cost efficiencies of voice calls, which carry the destination country’s CallerID, to engage with consumers. 

As more countries establish rules for inbound voice calls, there is growing concern that legitimate calls will not successfully reach the intended customers. Why is that? 

Over the past several years, the U.S. and Canada have implemented authentication solutions that rely on numbering intelligence, authentication and know your customers metrics to mitigate illegal robocalls by reducing the impact of illegal CallerID spoofing. In the U.S., for example, the SHAKEN framework includes a CallerID authentication process and a traceback capability. Together, there is a digital handshake between the service providers originating the call and authenticating the accuracy of the calling number information, which helps identify and block illegal calls and spoofing.   

In the U.S. the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Triennial Report to Congress details the success of SHAKEN on the domestic front – with calls originating in-country. Now, the focus is on ensuring that legitimate calls coming from international numbers also receive the correct level of attestation to ensure that they, too, get delivered to their intended recipients and are not at risk of being identified as potential spam or scams. For reference, the A attestation label indicates that a caller’s identity is fully verified and can use that CallerID. The B attestation label indicates that the service provider cannot verify the right to use the CallerID. The C attestation label indicates that the terminating service provider cannot authenticate the originating source of the call – neither the caller identity nor their CallerID.