CRIMINALS NOW TURN TO FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND RETAILERS FOR PERSONAL INFORMATION

  

Criminals are not just targeting individuals trying to access personal financial information, they are now going after corporate call centers for retailers and financial institutions across the U.S., trying to gain access to and try to trick sales reps into handing over credit card numbers and other sensitive data that would give them access to customer accounts.

These phone fraud attacks have increased more than 30 percent since 2013. The Phone Fraud Report found that on average, one in every 2,200 calls to a call center for a retailer, bank, brokerage firm or credit card company is fraudulent - up from one in 2,900 in 2013. Companies that issue and process credit card transactions face the highest rate of phone fraud, three times more than other financial institutions: one call per every 900.

Banks, brokerage firms and other financial institutions are among the most attractive targets because they deal directly with money. Based on its analysis of more than 20 million phone calls, Estimates are that the average loss to a financial institution just from phone fraud is between $7 and $15 million a year. Each company is hit with 10 to 20 fraud attempts daily.

These attacks are often sophisticated and done by criminal gangs who use information stolen in recent data breaches, the report said. VOIP calls are cheap and U.S. phone numbers are easy to "spoof," meaning it is easy to make a fake U.S. number appear on caller ID. VoIP calls are also harder for law enforcement to trace.