If eBay, gangster movies, and ’90s rap has taught us anything, it’s that reputation is everything. Sure, a crooked eBay seller may be able to get away with one or two bait-and-switch transactions, but once his or her feedback profile starts to slip with negative reviews, he or she can kiss eBay PowerSeller status (and world domination) good-bye. Similarly, the last thing an aspiring street hustler should do is flinch in the face of intimidation. Show weakness, and others will soon move in on his or her corner. Similarly, Gang Starr dropped some of its most iconic lines advising the world what it took just to get a rep and the perils of reputation grown bigger (“stepped up to get your rep up,” as Pete Rock put it). Now you may not know the first thing about peer-to-peer auction selling, illegal drug dealing, or the musical stylings of Guru and DJ Premier, but all businesses should be aware the harm fraud campaigns can bring their otherwise thriving enterprises.

In this article, we cover:

For enterprises, reputation management isn’t always as simple as staying honest or muscling up on the streets. Oftentimes, it requires extraordinary effort and attention. Because try as you might to establish a sterling reputation in the marketplace, there will always be bad actors that twist your name toward their own gains.

And why wouldn’t they?

Stealing another entity’s likeness is a practice as old as time. Just like the glut of imposter Louis Vuitton handbags, Rolex watches, and Nike Jordan shoes you find at your local swap meet, so too do digital scam artists fake their way into the trust of their victims over emails, phone calls, and text messages. Number spoofing itself is the practice of deception over the phone by appearing on caller ID as someone else, commonly the IRS, the FBI, a trusted financial institution, or some other such brand millions of people do business with every day. In absence of any credentials of their own, fraudsters borrow the name of reputable businesses in order to get a foot in the door and the attention of someone who would otherwise not give them the time of day.

So really, the harder your business works to establish and maintain its reputation, the more desirable it becomes to rip off. And try as you may to keep your name spotless, it takes deliberate action to fend off these attacks. It’s not enough to keep your head down and be the best you can be. You must incorporate measures to detect and deter imposter fraud proactively. Failing to do so allows imposter campaigns to carry on virtually unchecked. Soon you will find your once stellar reputation beginning to sag.

Given enough erosion of trust through repeated fraud attempts, not only will consumers stop trusting the legitimacy of any call or communication originating from anyone claiming to be you on sight (even legitimate calls from you yourself!), call blocking technology may even begin to tag your legitimate calls from you as potential fraud. You do not want things to get to that point. Once legitimate calls are getting misclassified as spam and blocked or sent straight to voicemail, the damage has already taken its toll — damage that is difficult to undo. Call answer rates will tank and customer engagement suffers. Soon, all the momentum you worked hard to create swings in the wrong direction, becoming ever harder to reverse.

YouMail Brand Protection Service to the Rescue

YouMail’s brand protection service prevents bad actors from using your brand in their fraud campaigns. We do so by working closely with both carriers and US authorities.

We work with USTelecom, the industry’s robocall mitigation agency, and its member telecommunications companies that carry the calls to analyze metadata and provide objective evidence to stop fraud at the source.

AI-powered analytics detect fraud campaigns that use your brand name, regardless if they do so using human or synthesized speech, DID spoofing, variations in campaign duration, frequency, carrier network, or source location.

We provide brand threat reports that include complete visibility into all current threats. We identify and classify fraud campaigns using metrics that provide insight into campaign activity and reach.

We provide 360-degree visibility across US carriers through our live call sensor network, rapidly identifying and responding to emerging brand impostor attacks.

Our campaign surveillance and alerting technology can confirm whether your mitigation efforts against specific campaigns are effective.

All of these insights come as a result of our rich database compiled from answering billions of live user calls across all carriers. We are trusted and deployed by major service providers and enterprises, our data cited by The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, and other news outlets.

There’s really no better way to keep your nose clean of impostor scams than to have YouMail as your “muscle.” We help save your customers from fraud loss, and help your outbound campaigns get traction as you remove the slippery remnants of impostor scams from your name.

There’s no time to lose. Complete the full cycle of call reputation management right away with YouMail’s brand protection service. Schedule a demo today.


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