TransNexus in the News

The New York Times has published an article describing the threat of telecom traffic pumping fraud and the risk it poses for small businesses. TransNexus is cited in the article.

A small architecture firm with only seven employees in Atlanta, Georgia - ForemanSeeley Fountain Architecture (FSF) - became a victimof $166,000 in fraudulent phone call charges over the course of a weekend in March 2014.Fraudsters had successfully hacked the company’s phone systemto route outbound calls to premium rate numbers in Gambia, Somalia, and the Maldives. FSF filed a complaint with the FCC denoting that the $166,000 in charges would have taken 34 years for the architecture firm to accumulate based on their regular telephone use.

This type of telephone fraud primarily affects small businesses and amounted to $4.73 billion globally in 2013. Further, the Communications Fraud Control Association has stated that this is a $1 billion increase from the fraud amount in 2011.

Bob Foreman, president of the architecture firm, stated that they were unaware that the potential fraud risk even existed. He is not alone. A lot of small businesses aren’t aware of the risk their telephone systems pose without any anti-fraud measures to protect them.

“It’s relentless,” said Jim Dalton, founder of TransNexus, which sells Internet calling management software. “If you put a computer on the internet, it immediately starts getting probed for a weak point.”To prevent the same circumstance, Dalton and telecommunications industry experts caution consumers to shutoff call forwarding and to establish strong passwords for their voice mail systems and for placing international long distance calls. “People don’t realize their phone is a six-figure liability waiting to happen,” Dalton stated.

Read the full article: Phone Hackers Dial and Redial to Steal Billions