Background
Several years ago, the Chinese government introduced measures to protect residents and businesses from an influx of nuisance, spam, and fraudulent telephone calls coming from overseas.
The Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security developed a smartphone application called “National Anti-Fraud Centre” with the sole aim of combating and preventing telecommunications network fraud.
Since then, all carriers sending international calls into China have had difficulties and no one can guarantee international calls will be connected successfully.
The Impact
Many provinces, businesses, and education establishments have mandated the app be installed for all residents, employees, or students. The app also provides information to learn about the latest fraud tactics as well as the ability to report fraud attempts.
Combined with data generated by the app, it was also the responsibility of in-country domestic carriers to filter inbound calls from their overseas peers that carry internationally originating calls into China.
Dealing with domestic fraud and scammers can be more easily achieved by requiring individual ID and other documentation to assert the identity of the individuals or businesses. However, the vast majority of fraudulent calls comes from overseas, where China is not able to vet the ownership or validity of the callers or the international numbers they present onto the local network.
Therefore, any behavior that was determined to be suspicious could be flagged, this potentially includes:
- High quantity of unanswered calls coming from an international number
- Increase in calls from the same international number to different local numbers
- Increase in calls from different international numbers to the same local number
- Higher than average calling threshold
- Short duration calls (i.e., under 1 minute)
- Unsolicited marketing calls
- International toll-free numbers
- Other number masking activities such as spoofing sales numbers on outbound calls
This solution is completely agnostic of which carrier is being used, it impacts all telecommunications companies attempting to connect calls into China in the same way.
LoopUp are working with the relevant organizations, carriers, partners, and authorities in China where applicable to understand how we, and all other international carriers can help improve the situation.
PLEASE NOTE: This does not affect China numbers provided by LoopUp that are calling domestically or calling out of China to international destinations.
Conclusion
Until the situation changes, no carriers are able to guarantee the success or quality of connecting internationally originating calls in China.
