What Is YouMail PS Score and What Does it Mean for CSP Decision Making?

Communication service providers face a growing problem. As robocall attacks become more sophisticated, the elimination of unlawful voice and text campaigns remains elusive. STIR/SHAKEN provides a degree of assurance, but it is flawed. That’s why robocall mitigation services remain a necessary measure of protection to detect and interdict unwanted traffic that otherwise originates, traverses, or terminates networks. YouMail Protective Services provides solutions for communication service providers (CSPs) and third-party vendors — starting with YouMail PS Score.

In this article, we cover:

• How CSP decision making remains challenging despite STIR/SHAKEN.
• Content-based analytics versus event-based analytics.
• What is YouMail PS Score?

In what ways does STIR/SHAKEN lack? Its use of digital certificates and encryption for more reliable telephone number attestation is helpful, but issues begin to surface considering the interconnection between rural telecom operators and networks remains TDM/SS7. Despite calls originating from rural operators being authenticated by STIR, validation is rendered ineffective as the STIR/SHAKEN token can be lost prior to reaching terminating carrier networks.

In other words, STIR/SHAKEN is only capable to a point. What it can’t account for is call intent. The disconnect between number owner validity and the content a leasee uses in its call campaign has proven problematic. In a STIR/SHAKEN world, telephone usage behavior monitoring is still critical.

STIR/SHAKEN falls into the category of event-based analytics. It relies on network signaling, switching, and handset resources to attempt to predict outcomes based on an assessment of the data presented. While the data may infer that calls from a particular telephone number are indicative of spam or potential fraud, these predictions as intent can only be proven post-fact.  

Whereas signaling data can be misleading, content-based analytics inspects actual call content to ascertain an objective truth of intent. That’s why brand monitoring tools such as Brand Monitor from YouMail Protective Services are capable of protecting brand identity over the voice channel by monitoring explicit unauthorized brand name mentions and potential trademark infringement. Leveraging content-analytics, we are able to alert enterprises of impersonation incidents, including call volume of bad actor campaigns, and their impact. 

What Is YouMail PS Score?

Quite simply, YouMail PS Score is telephone number scoring-as-a-service. Unwanted robocall data is captured by millions of YouMail app users — including consumers and small-to-medium-sized businesses — and analyzed by the YouMail Sensor Network. YouMail PS Score uses content-based analytics to score and categorize audio content as spam, unlawful, or outright fraud with a high degree of accuracy. CSPs, enterprises, and third-party vendors trust YouMail PS Score for informed decision making.

By incorporating mitigation solutions such as YouMail PS Score (as well as YouMail PS Watch and YouMail PS Clear) CSPs can begin to identify unlawful calls with greater accuracy. Considering the FCC has made combatting unlawful robocalls and malicious caller ID spoofing a top consumer protection priority, the YouMail PS suite of solutions helps prevent providers from becoming a target of bad actors. Further, the YouMail PS ecosystem helps CSPs avoid cease-and-desist letters, which may result in the ultimate penalty: going out of business due to noncompliance and/or poor management.

CSPs such as Voxox, SipNav, Veriswitch, and more use YouMail PS Score for real-time decision making, including labeling, redirecting, or blocking calls. CSPs then use YouMail PS Watch for informed Know Your Customer (KYC) decisions. The YouMail PS Watch dashboard supplements service provider KYC efforts in a convenient and easy-to-use web-based portal that provides a visualization of unwanted robocall campaigns and content details.

Consider too that while VoIP and SIP provide benefits such as greater flexibility, less reliance on fewer vendors, lower costs, a lower barrier to entry, and greater survivability through multiple routes and redundancy, one of the unintended consequences of ultracheap networking is telephone numbers can be treated as a near worthless asset. Robocall mitigation software helps wrangle the negative results of this environment by monitoring telephone number user behavior via third-party, content-based analytics.

YouMail Protective Services works with CSPs and vendor partners to eliminate unlawful voice and text campaigns with tools such as YouMail PS Score. We protect our customers and their vendor infrastructure with market-leading scoring-as-a-service tools and more to detect and interdict unwanted traffic. Schedule a demo today to see how YouMail PS Score can assist with your decision making.