Munz Bharde started as a Y2K programmer in 1997 before venturing into the dynamic world of e-commerce. This transition marked the beginning of a diverse career that spanned multiple technologies, software platforms, and databases, ultimately leading him to the telecommunications industry as a product leader. Specializing initially in voice communications, Munz skillfully blended his expertise with messaging technologies and, more recently, has enriched his portfolio with a significant focus on fraud mitigation strategies.

With a rich background that spans over twenty-five years, half of which has been dedicated to the telecommunications sector, Munz has been pivotal in transferring key insights across industries to enhance value and service delivery. His innovative use of numbering information to launch services that combat telecom and account takeover fraud has not only been instrumental in reducing fraud but has also streamlined the delivery of such products and services. 

Currently he oversees TruContact Numbering services and is at the helm of powering TruValidate services, continuing to make significant contributions to the industry.

An avid cook, Munz also takes pride in crafting his own recipes, with a particular flair for fish dishes and breakfasts. By popular demand, he has the title of the official breakfast maker for the Bharde family.

About the Series

This is the third installment in the One Expert, One Topic series, where field experts select a topic and share essential insights using Matt Abrahams’s What/So-What/Now-What format. Presented in written form, it provides more time to absorb the topic and guides readers on where to go for further learning. Writing is both challenging and time consuming; we are grateful to our contributors for sharing their wisdom in this format. 

What

For those of us Gen Xers, we started to use personal phones or mobile phones when we reached adulthood. And with the millennials and Gen Zers, it’s been getting earlier and earlier in life. A phone used to be a common household communication device, but with the advent of mobile phones, it has become a very personal device associated with the user. The single piece of information that uniquely identifies the phone device is the phone number, which in turn identifies the user of that device. Now, with the evolution of the mobile phone and the advent of smartphones, enterprises started providing services through applications, and these services evolved from non-transactional to highly financial with a high propensity of fraud and victimization. In addition, around 110 countries in the world have adopted phone number portability, where a person can retain his phone number and get service from another operator.

Circling back, the only piece of information making this device/user identifiable to the world is the phone number. Due to the nature of the phone number’s uniqueness, regulators and administrators of all the countries and regions around the world have used extensive caretaking to keep it pristine and clear. They use extensive processes to generate numbering plans within their jurisdiction—so much so that regulators allocate blocks specifically for certain use like toll-free or satellite or VoIP or premium, or usage of various registries for out-of-band use cases.

So What

The uniqueness and the ubiquity of the services on the phone device makes it as powerful as the Social Security number or the passport. This makes the phone number a high-value asset used to authenticate a user but also makes it very vulnerable and hence a target for exploitation. Fraudsters change the calling number in a voice call (ANI spoofing) and make it look like a local call to get favorable conversion rates; or to do Origin-based routing where interop deals are in place between regions.

With the rise of 2FA or MFA, texte messages are used to authenticate users through phone numbers, which leads to SIM swap fraud or port-out fraud to take over a victim’s financial account. On the same lines, the system can be abused by middle men to artificially generate traffic. Or fraudsters can use it to impersonate a brand by using their standard call center phone number or toll-free number to communicate with users and gain sensitive information.

According to CFCA, the estimated global fraud loss increased from $29.2B in 2017 to $39.9B in 2021.

All of this can slowly erode the confidence and the trust that a subscriber puts on communication retrieved through their phone channels, whether voice call or text message. And for the enterprises, this will lead to loss of brand equity.

Now What

The phone number by itself goes through a high level of regulatory process to come to existence in our normal system. So in order to restore the purity and uniqueness of the phone number, it would be important to use some of the regulatory datasets that keep the phone numbers unique. Any service provider should be able to easily use this information to filter traffic generated from or destined to phone numbers that are not supposed to generate traffic. For example, only phone numbers belonging to certain blocks (mobile, fixed, satellite, VoIP, etc.) should be able to generate or receive voice traffic—or to receive or generate text messages. This simple elimination of unwanted and undesired traffic can keep the networks and brands safe. Some of these measures are very effective in eliminating Origin-Based Routing (OBR) for voice or to minimize Artificially Inflated Traffic (AIT) for messaging.

There are additional processes available in the marketplace like SIM swap and call-forwarding detect where sources like the mobile operators databases can verify in real time the authenticity and validation of a phone number tied to a device. Other sources like header enrichment can even go beyond and validate whether the inbound communication is legitimate or artificial. Some solutions like branded calling can verify the origination of the traffic when a subscriber receives it, thus improving trust on that communication channel.

Users of any telephony service from voice to messaging to CPaaS need to look at this foundation of a phone number and see how it can help reduce fraud or noise within their platform and network. Just like delivery of a phone call or text message uses phone portability to transmit voice or text communication, some regulators around the world have added fraud mitigation as a permitted use case.

Enterprises can relay that they are using valid phone numbers and that the call/text was verified at origination. This will not only help enterprises get a better conversion rate on reaching their customers but also improve their trust in the enterprise brand.