Fraud Prevention - Beware of ANACs

What is an ANAC, and why is awareness of when users dial an ANAC an important fraud prevention technique?

An ANAC is an Automated Number Announcement Circuit. When you dial an ANAC, a recording will tell you the telephone number you are calling from. This is a common tool used by telephone company technicians to verify telephone line circuits are accurately installed. A well-known ANAC is provided by MCI at 1-800-444-4444.

So why should fraud analysts be aware of users dialing ANACs? The reason is because some fraud scenarios require the fraudster to report their calling number to their revenue sharing partner in order to get paid.

Here is an example: A fraudster has a deal with a unscrupulous termination provider to get a share of termination revenue generated by the fraudster. To get paid, the fraudster must report his calling number to the termination provider. However, when a fraudster hacks into a telephone system, it is not always possible to know the calling number reported by the hacked phone system.

But dialing an ANAC solves this problem by identifying the calling number of the hacked phone. Now the fraudster can generate fraudulent traffic and report the calling number to his revenue sharing partner. As an additional fraud prevention feature, TransNexus has added a configurable fraud trigger to identify, and generate alerts for, calls to ANACs.