How fraudsters undermine text passcodes

Malicious bots are taking new forms – a burst of spam and scam text messages led to 18,000+ consumer complaints at the FCC last year. One of the newest scams – artificial inflation of traffic (AIT) – targets the SMS authentication codes sent by the mobile messaging industry and generates high volumes of fake traffic via mobile applications or websites.

AIT is problematic for businesses because it raises the application-to-person (A2P) costs at the expense of the enterprise. Conversely, sending too many one-time-passcodes (OTP) to consumers drives mistrust and can reflect poorly on the brand’s reputation.

In this Help Net Security video, Lee Suker, Head of Authentication and Number Information at Sinch, talks about how moving away from passwords and SMS OTP is much more about human factors than technology factors.