BT says new AI technology stops 5 million scam and spam calls a month – here’s how
- 28% of all calls are flagged as spam or scam by the new technology
BT has turned to AI in a bid to clamp down on the high number of scam and spam calls that Brits face every day on their landlines.
The telecom giant says its new AI technology has stopped millions of attempts from scammers in the past four months.
The AI tool monitors incoming calls to notify customers of suspected spam or scam calls. It is made possible by the American security company Hiya.
BT launched the scam prevention tool in May and has stopped 20.1 million scam and spam calls in the four-month period: 2.7 million scam calls and 17.7 million ‘nuisance’ spam calls.
Scam-beating: BT uses AI to detect and block scam and spam calls before they reach landline users
Given this trajectory, more than 60 million scam calls could reach landline users in a year – or 5 million per month.
Home phones are still used by four in five over-65s in Britain, a group that BT says is at particularly high risk of phone ‘vishing’ scams.
BT is urging its landline users to check that they (and their loved ones) have the new technology as scam calls become increasingly common in the months leading up to Christmas.
AI voice clone scams are on the rise, prompting Starling Bank to launch an awareness campaign around them to warn customers.
An AI voice cloning scam is an advanced type of scam where fraudsters use voice cloning technology to replicate a person’s voice from a short audio clip.
Fraudsters can cheaply and easily capture and create an audio deepfake online in minutes.
Scammers can then identify their victim’s relatives and use the cloned voice to send them a phone call, voicemail or voicemail, asking for money that is urgently needed, for example due to an accident or to pay rent.
How does BT block scam and spam calls?
BT’s landline service, Digital Voice, has built in an AI-powered tool that monitors incoming calls and notifies customers of suspected spam calls.
It uses machine learning, powered by spam and fraud call protection company Hiya, to collect information about scam detection and improve protection on every malicious call it encounters. In one day it can block more than 46,500 scam calls.
When customers receive a potential spam call, they will see a visual warning on their landline phone screen with the text ‘nuisance?’.
They then have the choice to reject or accept an incoming call that is marked as spam by the technician.
Scam calls are automatically forwarded to a customer’s junk voicemail, protecting them from the threat of scammers.
Any call from a registered company will display the name to verify it is genuine.
Residents of Britain received an average of three spam calls per month from January to June this year, with 28 percent of all unknown calls flagged as spam, Hiya data shows.
This equates to approximately 195 million spam calls per month.
Around 2.5 million BT customers already receive the new call monitoring service via Digital Voice.
BT says this figure will double as more customers upgrade to digital landlines, and BT expects to block more than 1.5 million scam calls every month once all customers switch to Digital Voice.
Lucy Baker MBE, director of BT, said: ‘This new Hiya technology has now been integrated with Digital Voice and is proving to be incredibly effective in stopping scam calls. We remain committed to protecting customers during the transition to digital landlines.
Alex Algard, CEO of Hiya, added: “We are pleased to support BT in its mission to protect users from unwanted calls. It’s great to see that our technology has successfully blocked fraud and spam calls.”
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