YouMail and Pindrop Form Election Defense Grid To Stop Fraud In Election Calls & Texts

On January 21^st 2024, America received the first election interference attack through the form of a Joe Biden deepfake robocall that encouraged recipients to not vote in the presidential primary and instead to “save their vote until November”.

 While the public and industry were already on high alert with the connecting of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) to the public telephone network, this moment solidified these concerns with concrete proof of the art-of-possible in election disinformation and interference.

 YouMail has been at the front lines in the war to stop robocalls at their source for over a decade, wielding the live evidence of phone calls and texts arriving on consumer phones to shut down the accounts behind those communications at their source before they can grow in volume and reach more victims.  Likewise, Pindrop has been at the front lines of defenses combatting attacks and deepfakes afflicting call centers and enterprises that eventually turn into consumer fraud losses.

Introducing The Election Communication Defense Grid

Today we are proud to reveal an initiative that YouMail and Pindrop have been jointly working on for some time.

 The Election Communication Defense Grid (ECDG) is a fully integrated platform that connects YouMail’s vast cross-carrier sensor network evidence with its integrated carrier partners and the global leader in recognition of synthetic and deepfake audio, Pindrop Security.

YouMail and Pindrop have been working together to enhance the active monitoring and analysis of political and election robocalls with AI and deepfake detection. Robocalls from over a thousand members of Congress and political candidates have been analyzed to detect the presence of any synthetic or deepfake audio in the message.

By directly integrating Pindrop^Ⓡ Pulse^TM Inspect to analyze the live political and election robocalls captured by the extensive YouMail Sensor Network, threat teams at both companies have a live pulse on political end election disinformation and deepfake attacks as they are launched to the public.

Together, YouMail and Pindrop created the ECDG with integrated APIs that leverage the same advanced market leading solutions that both companies employ to protect top US banks from similar threats and reduce national robocall volumes from tens of millions of monthly calls made by the worst offenders to near-zero calls. The Election Communication Defense Grid (www.ecdg.org) is a critical foundation from the two market leaders at the forefront in the battle against the significant threats to elections from bad actors using calls and texts to deliver disinformation and deepfakes to the public.

Political Campaigns are a Prime Target for Phone Fraud

Within the phone network, some of the most prolific voice and SMS activity are political campaigns. This activity increases dramatically in volume and diversity as the calendar moves towards an election.   Political communications are critical to the fabric of democracy as political candidates and elected representatives rely on the accessibility of the public telephone network to connect with those they serve. 

The YouMail Sensor Network analyzes billions of real consumer calls from over 100 million originating numbers receiving by consumers of all major US carriers to accurately and immediately detect threats as they occur.  It is effective regardless of attack duration, frequency, spoofing and other tactics and has been tracking and monitoring political communications for over 12 years to recognize the powerful impact that robocalls have in connecting representatives to those they represent.  Well-known names spanning Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio utilize voice robocalls to connect with the public and those they represent.

As of August 2024, over two hundred senators and members of congress have relied on the public phone network to connect through phone-based townhalls with their citizens such as Senators Marsha Blackburn, Art Hayward, Sri Thanedar, Roger Marshall and Congressional members Trent Franks, Hakeem Jeffries, Morgan McCarty, Rick Allen, Buddy Carter, Gabe Vasquez, Clay Higgins and more.   

Beyond these town hall calls, many representatives and candidates use these calls to rapidly address topics, solicit direct input and donations, and encourage voting on candidates and critical issues.

In recent years, evidence has been building of a growing number of calls with nefarious purpose among these political calls.   Just as banks, utilities and well-known brands are afflicted with imposter calls that look nearly identical to their real calls to customers, political calls are interspersed with calls that impersonate elected officials to the general public or are the operations of fraudulent, fictional political action committees (PACs).

Sunday January 21^st, 2024, is perhaps the most recent sensational example of these calls when thousands of robocalls using Joe Biden’s voice calls residents of New Hampshire and other states to suggest voters “save their vote” on the primary set to occur the upcoming Tuesday:

 This coming Tuesday is the New Hampshire Presidential Preference Primary. Republicans have been trying to push nonpartisan and Democratic voters to participate in their primary. What a bunch of malarkey. We know the value of voting Democratic when our votes count. It's important that you save your vote for the November election. We'll need your help in electing Democrats up and down the ticket. Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again. Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday. [remainder redacted]

The YouMail Sensor Network quickly caught evidence of these calls as they began operating and these calls were completely stopped that afternoon before they could increase in volume or establish multiple points of origination and vectors to the public in attempts to affect the Tuesday primary.

These calls were particularly noteworthy as they were the first examples of not only the YouMail Sensor Network playing a crucial role in a rapid disruption of an election interference campaign, but because they made use of deepfake technology to create a synthetic and convincing clone of Joe Biden’s voice in delivering the message to “save your vote”.

Thanks to the gradual adoption of STIR/SHAKEN in the telephone network over the past few years, the YouMail Sensor Network can instantly tie most robocall campaigns to the originating carriers enabling those campaigns.  Throughout 2024, YouMail has observed an increasing number of originating carriers enabling “AI enhanced robocalls” which have wired large language models (LLMs) to deliver highly targeted, conversational calls to the public in a variety of synthetic yet extremely realistic voices.  Many of these AI robocalls offer debt solutions, financial aid, real estate assistance, insurance, warranties and other services as an evolution of the pre-recorded audio present in the billions of telemarketing calls that affected the public over the past decade.

Monitoring Tens of Millions of Monthly Calls for All Forms Of Fraud

YouMail has rapidly grown the YouMail Sensor Network which monitors live communication evidence from 20-30 million monthly phone numbers receiving calls and messages.  This Sensor Network plays a critical role in US Communications infrastructure, enabling not just the YouMail Robocall Index, the industry’s most used resource, to understand monthly robocall volume and campaign activity but also the bulk of investigative, disruptive and public protection against illegal and unwanted robocalls and robotexts.

Many top US communications providers have integrated YouMail Watch, Score and Fastlanes solutions into their networks either directly or through one of YouMail’s partners, giving those providers a real-time view into the high-risk voice campaigns originating or transiting their networks. Thanks to the cooperation of these communications companies within the wider fabric of the thousands that form the backbone of the US telephone network, any dangerous voice campaign utilizing these networks sounds a fire alarm, enabling providers to block them within minutes after beginning their malicious activity.

The integration between YouMail, Pindrop and these communications better protects from the threat of generative AI and deepfake technology in the hands of bad actors that seek to compromise US elections.  With YouMail and Pindrop integrated, it’s virtually impossible to inject any widespread deepfake attack against the US that would go uncaught by the Election Communication Defense Grid and the impact is greatly diminished thanks to capabilities to short-circuit the attack quickly at compromised or enabling communication providers.