Since most business phone systems are now based on the Internet, hackers have a new way to use an old trick to make money. Each year, hackers run up fraudulent phone bills totaling over $4 billion, according to the Communications Fraud Control Association. This fraud is also growing by about one billion dollars per year.
Here’s how they do it –
First, the hacker signs up for a leased, premium-rate phone number, like the 1-900 system. These numbers are often used for psychic lines or sex chat services. The hacker gets a percentage of the per-minute charges to callers, which are usually over $1 a minute. The payouts can go as high as 24 cents per minute.
Next, the hacker breaks into a business phone system, usually at night or on a weekend when no one is around to take notice. Using their computers, the hacker makes hundreds of calls at a time and forwards up to 220 minutes worth of calls each minute to their pay line. The hackers get their percentage sent to them via Western Union or wire transfers.
The victim, in some cases, gets stuck paying the bill, which can run from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Since the scam is occurring internationally, law enforcement is nearly helpless to stop these hackers.
So how does a small business defend themselves from such hacker scams? The answer is to hire an expert company to help with your system. They can set your phones up to detect and prevent the scam from ever happening. By blocking international calls and call forwarding, then close monitoring of phone usage patterns, a good phone/IT company protects its customers from hackers and their potentially devastating scams.
For more information contact Advanced Communications: 888-919-4948
