Does your call center receive calls from customers claiming that you called asking for money … but your team never did? Or perhaps customers are getting calls from your company (they think) that leave them defrauded and distressed.

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all regularly deal with scammers pretending to work for them and trying to pose as them. And if your company hasn’t faced the issue yet, it almost certainly will.

In this article, we cover:

• What is brand spoofing?
• How do you stop brand spoofing with robocall mitigation?
• The tools to stop brand spoofing
• The importance of a comprehensive strategy for brand protection from brand spoofing

What Is Brand Spoofing?

The growing phenomenon in our example is known as brand spoofing. Brand impersonation or brand spoofing is an umbrella term for a form of fraud that deals when scammers pose as a trusted brand, either through email “phishing” or through caller ID spoofing, often with the goal of stealing information or money. 

Robocall spoofing is particularly dangerous because it can reach thousands upon thousands of people. And, depending on your business, some of those customers could actually be waiting for a call from your team right now.

The FCC has even recently released an advisory about this growing threat to small businesses. So, how can you mitigate unauthorized brand name usage over the voice channel?

How Do You Stop Brand Spoofing?

If your company has been the victim of “vishing” and/or robocall brand spoofing, then one of the fastest ways to ensure robocallers stop using your number is to invest in robocall mitigation solutions.

The best robocall mitigation solutions use a variety of methods to detect and eliminate imposter traffic, protect your brand image, protect your company reputation, and protect customer relationships.

Those methods may feature a blend of call attestation software, brand identity monitoring, call volume monitoring, legal action, and more to help block the never-ending stream of nefarious brand spoofing calls.

The Tools To Stop Brand Spoofing

Tools to help stop brand spoofing include:

• Web scanning tools that detect misuse of logos, domain names and other assets;
• Reputation management tools that monitor user postings on social media and other sites;
• Phishing and voice phishing (vishing) detection tools that monitor use of brand names in attacks via email and phone calls.

For phishing and vishing attacks, perhaps the most successful tool is content-based robocall analytics engines.

As an example, for more than a decade YouMail has tracked and analyzed the results of billions of live calls to millions of consumers. YouMail leverages telephone numbers across the full breath of telephone networks in the United States and Canada, including YouMail app users with telephone numbers from AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and beyond.

Billions of data points, combined with AI and Machine Learning, reveal when your brand is being spoofed.

 Other methods used to crush robocall brand spoofing include using STIR/SHAKEN attestation software (which verifies the authenticity of the caller), as well as tracking and identifying calling behaviors that indicate fraud may be taking place.

When used in tandem, these methods dramatically curb brand spoofing.

They also support enforcement, legal action, and litigation against the people and companies involved in brand spoofing. It also may serve as a viable legal defense for your own company — as shown in a recent case against JPMorgan, where the plaintiff argued that the company did not have proper robocall mitigation measures in place.

The Importance Of A Comprehensive Strategy For Brand Protection From Brand Spoofing

Brand spoofing is at an all-time high, and customers are more afraid of having their identities stolen than ever before. It only takes one major brand spoofing disaster to cause a valuable customer to leave you … and to share their experiences online with millions.

Today, more than ever before, people expect the companies they patronize to protect their information. When they believe they can’t trust you — either on the phone, or to protect them from fraud using your name — they will generally find another brand they can trust. 

But just monitoring your online reputation for brand impersonation is not enough. You need to take active steps to ensure that your company’s number can’t easily be spoofed in the first place, and when it does, you’ll know about it quickly.

Make no mistake about it. Brand protection requires keeping your customers safe from acts like vishing and phishing from brand spoofing. Brand protection also means safeguarding the assets that your company owns—and that includes the exclusive right to use your own phone number. Read more about this topic and the importance of protecting your brand, and read more about YouMailPS Enterprise Solutions here >

Is Your Brands Reputation at Risk?

Listen to actual scams impersonating companies in our

Branded Scam Call Index