Payfone wins patent for its SIM swap fraud prevention technology

Called the Trust Score, the technology is already helping proactive service providers to protect their customers by detecting SIM swap and porting signals before hackers can take over accounts, and alerting companies of abnormal activity.

Payfones Trust Score gives companies real-time insights, at the time of a transaction, by combining a check of whether a SIM swap has taken place with advanced behavioural analytics. Payfone is able to provide these services without storing or passing personally identifiable information in production environments to service providers who obtain consent to use the Trust Score.

IM swap attacks have been making headlines as one of the fastest-growing and most devastating fraud vectors plaguing companies and consumers today, with the number of victims increasing more than 250% between 2013 and 2016, according to the US Fair Trade Commission. As reported by WIRED, CNBC and Motherboard, hackers have been using the scam, and a variation known as number port-out or porting fraud, to drain millions of dollars from consumers online accounts. In addition to major reputational damage, companies risk losing users to more secure competitors, and find themselves liable for billions in lost funds.