By Doug Green
“We want everybody to be a spam reporter.”
In this special Cloud Communications Alliance and Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, about the launch of the National Spam Reporting Center, a new consumer-facing resource designed to make it easier to report spam, scam calls, robotexts, and other suspicious communications.
The new site, spamreporters.com, is intended to give consumers one simple place to report unwanted or fraudulent communications. Quilici says the problem today is confusion. If a consumer receives a text, robocall, or email impersonating a bank, retailer, insurance provider, or government agency, it is not always clear where that person should go or who should be notified.
YouMail created the National Spam Reporting Center to simplify that process. Consumers can go to spamreporters.com, upload a screenshot or report, and YouMail can then use that information to help identify patterns, alert carriers, and support faster action against abusive campaigns.
“The key thing is we act on them,” Quilici says.
The podcast explores how these reports can benefit multiple groups. Consumers get a simple reporting path. Carriers can receive evidence about numbers or campaigns that may need to be shut down. Banks, e-commerce companies, insurers, and other frequently impersonated brands can gain better visibility into abuse targeting their customers.
Quilici points to current scam activity around health insurance, Medicare, preapproved loans, and impersonation campaigns as examples of where consumer reporting can provide important signals. In some cases, consumer reports can help distinguish between legitimate communications and suspicious campaigns.
The discussion also looks at the challenge facing legitimate businesses. Many organizations depend on calls and texts to reach customers about appointments, service updates, reminders, and other important matters. But when those calls are mislabeled as spam, consumers do not answer. That has led some legitimate businesses to use large pools of numbers in an effort to reach customers, a technique that can resemble the behavior of scammers.
Quilici says better reporting and faster analysis can help reduce that confusion, protect consumers, and improve the ability of legitimate businesses to reach customers.
YouMail does not expect the National Spam Reporting Center to eliminate the entire scam and spam problem. The goal is to reduce the damage by moving faster, using consumer-submitted reports, carrier relationships, and YouMail’s existing data to identify abuse and support action before larger enforcement processes run their course.
For service providers, enterprises, brands, and consumers, the message is clear: spam and scam prevention improves when more people can report what they are seeing and when that information can be acted on quickly.
Learn more at spamreporters.com
Learn more about YouMail at www.youmail.com