Brazil, the U.K. and Mexico have been identified as the top three home countries affected by mobile fraud attacks in a new report published by Syniverse. The report uncovered that the top three countries where fraudulent calls originated are the US, Spain and Peru, while the country in which the most fraudulent calls terminated was Cuba. Cuba has has gained a reputation as a hotspot for fraud termination because of the higher cost of calls terminating in that country.
The report, the second report in Syniverse’s “Understanding the Global Threat of Mobile Fraud” series that draws on data from the company’s risk management work with more than 120 mobile operators globally. Syniverse analysed data from 1 November, 2015 to 31 October, 2016, and ranked the top ten countries impacted most frequently by fraud.
“Analysing firsthand data is invaluable in the fight against mobile fraud,” said Kyle Dorcas, the vice president for Policy and Risk Management at Syniverse. “Unfortunately, experiences with fraud attacks are not often shared between operators, which can limit knowledge and make the challenge of combating fraud much more difficult. Our global network of mobile operators and the data from our work with them creates a unique fraud protection database and a window into the most critical fraud threats.”
Syniverse’s report also takes a closer look at high-incident countries – those that consistently rank highly for fraud origination and termination – and the makeup of traffic driving fraud in these locations. These findings include the following:
Both the US and Spain frequently rank highly for originating fraud. For the US, the use of national roaming over a wide area is apparently a major factor contributing to fraud. For Spain, the high volume of visitors from many different countries fosters an ideal environment for fraud to develop.
70% of SIMs that account for originating fraud in the US are from Mexico, and the majority (56% ) of fraud in Spain is perpetrated by SIM cards from the UK.
