YouMail Protective Services Watch 2.0 Service for Stronger Service Provider Industry Network Controls

Consumers Can Join in the Fight Against Robocalls by Using the YouMail Service

YouMail Protective Services'  Watch 2.0 is a service to help communications providers implement the best industry controls in their networks. Watch 2.0 helps carriers find in near real-time any customer accounts that cause consumer harm by using real, live active consumer evidence from the sizeable YouMail consumer user base, as well as from over ten million active honeypots. YouMail Protective Services will be demonstrating the Watch 2.0 service at the ITW 2024 conference in National Harbor, Maryland, May 14^th through 16h.

Watch 2.0 leverages this collection of calling data to root out bad calling patterns and to identify bad actors who operate on carrier networks. Only Watch 2.0 is on top of the emerging FCC requirements for providers to stop harming consumers due to shortcomings in their controls and policies to KYT (Know Your Traffic) through KYC (Know Your Customer) and KYUP (Know Your Upstream Provider). The latest FCC policy, announced this week, is to use a Consumer Communications Information Services Threat (C-CIST) classification to provide industry stakeholders with information to enhance their KYC and KYUP processes. The C-CIST classification is a mechanism "to formally name threat actors that are repeatedly using U.S. communications networks to perpetuate the most harmful, illegal schemes against consumers."

These policies are intended to protect consumers from fraudulent calls, but to work effectively, they require ongoing monitoring of customer traffic and fast action when problematic schemes are discovered. The Watch 2.0 solution provides insight to help determine if problematic calls that have led to a C-CIST classification are being enabled by a carrier network.

YouMail Watch 2.0 provides three tiers of traffic monitoring based on detailed call records that allow taking immediate action to stop illegal and/or unlawful traffic.

• Watch Shaken: Provides call records including Stir/Shaken attestation information for all illegal or unlawful calls that were signed by a service provider and that hit the YouMail honeypots.
• Watch Fraud: Provides call records of all definitively known fraudulent calls that originate from or traverse the service provider and wind up hitting real consumers or honeypots.
• Watch Complete: Extends Watch Fraud to cover all calls likely to be illegal or unlawful, not just those definitively known to be fraudulent.

Depending on the Watch service and service provider's needs, data can be accessed through an API, a dashboard, or through e-mailed reports. Further, each of these services can be up and running within very short periods of time with minimum effort.

"It's now possible for service providers to reliably, quickly, and economically detect when their customers are misbehaving and bothering Americans with illegal or unlawful robocalls," said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. "As more and more service providers adopt our Watch offering, we should see far fewer of those calls, and those carriers still allowing those calls will become even more obvious."

YouMail Protective Services relies on what are essentially intelligent, automated spam reports completed by YouMail on behalf of its user base when illegal or unlawful calls are detected. Consumers who want to do their part can simply download and set up the YouMail app, which will not only protect them from unwanted calls, texts, and voice messages, but will automatically make it easier to shut down the bad actions behind those problematic calls.