T-Mobile Goes After Scam Calls With 'Caller Verified' Feature
By Angela Moscaritolo - PC Magazine
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T-Mobile is going after phone scammers and spammers with a new feature that lets wireless users know when a call is authentic.
The self-proclaimed "un-carrier" says it's the first in the industry to launch caller verification using the STIR and SHAKEN standards.
"These standards combat illegal caller ID spoofing, which occurs when scammers temporarily hijack a phone number to match the area code and 3-digit prefix of the person they are targeting, making the incoming call look familiar," T-Mobile explained in a news release.
This feature is currently limited to Galaxy Note 9$855.00 at Amazon handsets, but T-Mobile said it will be available on "more smartphones later this year." After installing the latest free software update, Galaxy Note 9 users will see "Caller Verified" on the incoming call screen when T-Mobile has confirmed the call is authentic and hasn't been intercepted.
At this point, this only works for calls made on the T-Mobile network, but that could change in the future. "Once other wireless providers implement STIR/SHAKEN, Caller Verified will work on calls made across networks," T-Mobile said.
This new caller verification feature comes after T-Mobile in 2017 started flagging known scam calls for its users. Dubbed Scam ID, that feature, which is included in all T-Mobile postpaid plans at no extra cost, will pop up a warning if a call is coming from a number identified in PrivacyStar's database of scam callers. T-Mobile said it has flagged more than 8.9 billion calls as Scam Likely and blocked more than one billion scam calls in the last 18 months.
According to recent data from Truecaller, 7 percent of all spam calls in the US are scams. Unfortunately, many of those scams are effective. Last April, Truecaller said that one in 10 American adults had lost money to a phone scam in the past 12 months.
