At the MEF Leadership Forum Canada 2024Â in Toronto, Tina Donaldson, VP of Strategy for netnumber, expert providers of phone number intelligence data, delivered key insights on messaging innovation and trust in mobile services. Her presentation covered some of the critical industry resources reducing messaging fraud in the U.S. and Canada, as well as the current development of a first-of-its-kind tool that will give the industry a major leg up against bad actors in texting.
Here Donaldson outlines the central takeaways from her insightful presentation. The entire show is available to watch on demand now.
Text messaging has become one of the most popular forms of communication today, with industry estimates pointing to over 2 trillion text messages sent annually. Industry observers might be surprised to learn that, in North America, a single industry registry provides the pivotal information essential for text messaging to proceed.
Meet the nnSR®
The netnumber Service Registry® (nnSR) is the highly regarded industry database that underlies this critical communication channel. The nnSR® collects, manages and distributes authoritative routing information for the telecom messaging industry in North America. Launched by netnumber in 2008, the nnSR® has gained interest throughout the world as a model for improved message routing, prompting other countries to consider adopting this approach.
Along with general messaging, the nnSR® serves as a central component of U.S. business messaging by storing the telephone numbers provided by carriers for use as 10DLC sender IDs. 10 DLCs can support large volumes of text messages and have emerged as a powerful tool for businesses to communicate with their customers. U.S. carriers have implemented requirements requiring all businesses and CPaaS providers to use 10DLC-registered numbers when sending A2P messages to their networks. (For more information on how businesses can adopt 10DLC messaging, download the new MEF guide here).
How the nnSR® Helps Fight Messaging Fraud
The nnSR® not only enables accurate message routing in North America, but it also works to protect subscribers and service providers from fraudulent texting schemes. This is accomplished via the nnSR’s rich set of authorization, conflict resolution and notification features provided to industry members.
The nnSR® also empowers safe communications capabilities by publishing dedicated service information for individual phone numbers. The messaging ecosystem consumes the respective data as regular updates or real-time queries, giving carriers near instantaneous notification of phone numbers not properly registered or tagged – a red flag for potential criminal activity. The nnSR® also provides real-time data access that aids multiple use cases, such as billing and migrating voice and messaging services between networks.
Other New Anti-Fraud Tools
Number Lock and Number Watch are two innovative anti-fraud tools that have recently come on the scene. Developed by netnumber, Number Lock enables brands to ensure their non-mobile numbers cannot be text-enabled. This valuable tool was built in response to requests from the financial sector. Banks and other financial institutions have wrestled with fraudsters hijacking familiar business numbers for use in texting scams targeting their business customers.
Number Watch, meanwhile, will monitor phone numbers selected by business enterprises for a range of changes that can signal possible fraud activity. Number Watch can also be used as a stand-alone product and does not have to be paired with Number Lock.
An Exciting New Fraud Tool
At industry conferences over the last year and in discussions with our closest partners, an interesting concept has emerged for creating a powerful new fraud-fighting tool. The concept? A fraud prevention registry cataloging phone numbers known to be involved in communications fraud. netnumber created the registry, which addresses multiple scenarios, including tracking a fraudulent call’s originating phone number as well as numbers used in the message itself, such as illegitimate 800 numbers.
For example, in collaboration with our partner WMC Global, the Fraud Prevention Registry contains phone numbers supplied by financial institutions and their customers based on reports of financial scams and fraud. With this tool, carriers can more easily identify illegitimate senders on their networks and even fight SIM Farm activity. CPaaS providers also have an additional tool to validate the legitimacy of text message senders on their platforms.
To learn more about industry resources helpful in combatting fraud, watch the full session above.
MEF Leadership Forum Canada 2024
Available on demand now
MEF Leadership Forum Canada returns to Toronto, where we explore the transformative power of AI and the crucial significance of trust and transparency in business messaging. – the whole show is avaialable to watch now.
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