Insights

Somos VP Scheduled to Speak on Toll-Free Fraud at NARUC Winter Policy Summit

Feb 06, 2018

Fraudulent phone calls are still a problem for today’s telecommunications and Toll-Free Service providers. Scammers have been known to use Toll-Free Numbers as covers for wide varieties of schemes to steal money or personal information. In response, members of the telecommunications and utility regulations community have come together to tackle this persistent issue.

This Sunday, February 11, Joel Bernstein, Somos Vice President, Regulatory and Public Policy, will join a panel discussion about Toll-Free fraud prevention efforts in conjunction with utility regulation. The panel is part of this year’s National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ (NARUC) Winter Policy Summit in Washington, D.C., a gathering of federal agencies, industry leaders, media, and advocacy organizations.

“We’re focusing on how we can work with utility companies to report fraudulent activity over Toll-Free Numbers to Somos, so we can contact the Responsible Organization (Resp Org) and confirm if fraud is being run on their Toll-Free Number,” Bernstein said. “Then, they can contact the customer and cut off the routing to that number, thereby freezing out the scammers from getting anymore leads on that number.”

Bernstein said our goal is to educate as many consumers and utility providers as possible about the signs of fraudulent activity, so the industries can work together to eliminate fraud from Toll-Free Numbers entirely.

“We want to alert those on the front lines who are answering the calls to help them understand what’s happening, how to process the information and get it to the right people to shut it down,” he said.

For more information on Toll-Free Fraud, please click here, and be sure to follow the NARUC Winter Policy Summit on Twitter at #NARUCWinter18 for more updates.