Artificially Inflated Traffic (AIT) fraud is a growing concern in business messaging (A2P) that’s becoming a greater challenge with rising SMS costs and sophisticated AI bots.
AIT commonly takes place when threat actors request one-time passwords (OTPs) or two-factor authentication (2FA) requests to a premium rate number. This results in organisations paying out for fake traffic that has no prospect of being converted into real business.
Already, AIT fraud is causing massive financial losses, costing enterprises $2.1bn in 2024, according to Juniper Research. The rise of AI tools capable of mimicking human behaviours has made it easier for fraudsters to generate fake traffic. AI bots can browse the web, engage with content, and interact with online platforms in a way that’s hard to distinguish from legitimate user actions. In combination with rising A2P SMS costs, this has increased the profit potential of AIT for fraudsters, giving them the means and incentive to deploy attacks.
Without reliable, trusted and up-to-date numbering insights to proactively spot the signs of AIT, organisations will continue to pay out for fraudulent OTP requests delivered to high-cost routes. This has the potential to damage business efficiency, revenue streams and trust in A2P as a channel.
AI and the Evolving AIT Challenge
There are several types of AIT fraud that organisations need to be aware of to understand the extent of the challenge facing the A2P ecosystem. Methods range from SMS trashing via the non-delivery of paid-for messages, to falsified transactions where organisations artificially inflate traffic to give the appearance that conversion rate targets have been met.
The most prominent type of AIT fraud, however, is external attacks. This occurs when threat actors create bot accounts which trigger fake OTP requests to high-value destinations, increasing costs for organisations.
In line with evolving technology trends, fraudsters are leveraging AI to carry out rapid AIT attacks on a much larger scale. Creating bots allows them to trigger OTPs to thousands of numbers in a short period of time while masquerading as a normal user. As OTP and 2FA requests aren’t flagged as spam, this often allows threat actors to bypass firewalls and avoid detection.
AIT fraud driven by AI tactics not only leads to financial losses for organisations. It also threatens to cause long-term damage to the reputation and trust of A2P messaging as a communications channel. As trust diminishes, users are exploring alternative channels they perceive to be more reliable to communicate with their customers.
Deploying Dedicated Data Intelligence
Without intelligent anti-fraud solutions in place, it’s impossible for organisations to determine whether A2P traffic is legitimate or fraudulent. Protecting against AIT fraud is an industry-wide responsibility that requires collaboration from the entire telecoms ecosystem.
Access to powerful, industry-backed datasets enables organisations to defend revenue streams against significant financial losses from bot attacks on A2P services. This helps tackle AIT by checking the number range, establishing whether numbers are valid and allocated to providers, and flagging high-cost ranges.
Organisations gain intelligent numbering insights that enable them to:
- Reduce Fraudulent OTP Requests – With trusted anti-fraud datasets in place, organisations can ensure revenue loss protection by pre-validating the numbers in their systems before outbound messaging activities are initiated. This means they can engage with legitimate high-value customers without the worry of fraud.
- Enhance Routing Optimisation – Leveraging a dedicated database allows organisations to enhance routing optimisation and alerting for critical destinations. With the right datasets in place, organisations can better handle traffic termination across networks with a higher risk. In turn, this delivers competitive advantages, enabling them to compete on quality, while reducing transit fees.
- Mitigate AIT-Based Losses – Deploying the right datasets provides organisations with the insight into whether a number is valid, ported and allocated to indicate signs of AIT fraud. It enables them to quickly identify flagged fraudulent numbers to avoid costs from high-rate and premium numbers that are not from legitimate end users.
- Increased Load Balanced Traffic. Deploying numbering data intelligence can help organisations win more messaging traffic that is load balanced across multiple suppliers by demonstrating that they apply strong fraud filtering and blocking. Filtering has the potential to mitigate thousands of global threats and attacks per day. Organisations benefit from improved reliability, enhanced performance and increased scalability.
The introduction of dedicated anti-fraud datasets is just one part of the solution to tackle AIT fraud in the A2P industry and restore trust in communications. As fraud tactics continue to become more sophisticated, key initiatives from industry working groups like Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF), i3Forum and GSMA are central to rebuilding trust.
Securing the Future of A2P
AIT fraud will continue to be an inevitable risk for the A2P ecosystem. Undoubtedly, this is a risk that will continue to rise as fraudsters exploit AI to launch faster, more efficient attacks.
Taking proactive measures will be key to protecting revenue streams, optimising A2P efficiency and ultimately restoring trust in the channel. By leveraging reliable, accurate and up-to-date datasets that are specifically designed to detect fraudulent numbers, organisations can take control of their A2P traffic and work towards an AIT-free future.
