Preventing SMS Pumping Fraud: A Guide to Our Protective Offerings

Preventing SMS Pumping Fraud: A Guide to Our Protective Offerings

Twilio offers robust solutions to protect your business from SMS pumping fraud, a deceptive practice where fraudsters generate fake SMS traffic to inflate costs. This type of fraud involves sending large volumes of SMS messages to premium-rate numbers or specific destinations to exploit the billing system. The resulting surge in charges can lead to significant financial losses and operational disruptions for businesses. Additionally, SMS pumping can erode customer trust and damage a company's reputation, making it crucial to implement effective measures to prevent such fraudulent activities.

Luckily, Twilio offers several options for protecting your business from SMS pumping fraud.

Verify Fraud Guard

Because SMS pumping fraud often targets phone verification forms, we built protection directly into the Verify API. Verify Fraud Guard works by analyzing your current and historical SMS traffic for unusual patterns. When it detects fluctuations indicative of SMS pumping fraud, Fraud Guard automatically blocks the suspected fraud and is included in the price of the Verify API. We are so confident in Fraud Guard that we offer a 100% guarantee on this Verify feature¹.

How to get started with Verify Fraud Guard

Set up Fraud Guard in the SMS configuration tab of your Verify Service in the Twilio Console. Once enabled, choose your protection level. Maximum protection will block more numbers, but may block legitimate users.

• Basic: Cautious blocking with very low false positives (less than 0.1%).
• Standard: Moderate blocking with minimal false positives (less than 1%)
• Max: Aggressive blocking with higher false positives (less than 2%)

Learn more about Fraud Guard in the documentation.

Lookup SMS Pumping Risk Score

The Lookup API provides a way to see the SMS pumping risk at any time for any number. This proprietary risk scoring model uses aggregate data from the millions of messages sent across Twilio's network every day. The score incorporates signals associated with risky carriers, abnormal traffic patterns, and low one-time passcode conversion rates.

Use the SMS pumping risk score as your primary fraud detection tool or to complement your in-house detection. The API provides a risk score ranging from 0 (no risk) to 100 (very risky). This empowers you to make informed decisions and set your own thresholds on whether to allow or block traffic to a phone number.

How to get started with Lookup SMS Pumping Risk Score

Send a request to the Lookup API with the sms_pumping_risk field:

You can decide what risk threshold to use, but suggested levels are:

• Low Risk: 0 - 60
• Mild Risk: 60 - 75
• Moderate Risk: 75 - 90
• High Risk: 90 - 100

Use these scores to determine whether to add additional friction before sending an SMS, fall back to a different channel, or block the request entirely. Find more details about the Lookup API and recommended implementation logic in the documentation.

SMS Pumping Protection for Programmable Messaging

Twilio offers automatic SMS Pumping Protection for Programmable Messaging, which proactively blocks fraudulent activities for your messaging applications.

Use the SMS pumping protection insights to see data visualizations and filter activity to:

• Monitor estimated cost savings from SMS Pumping Protection.
• Analyze trends in messages scanned by SMS Pumping Protection.
• Understand the geographic breakdown of your SMS Pumping Protection.

How to get started with SMS Pumping Protection Insights

Enable SMS pumping protection in Messaging Settings in the Console. This feature is available globally but note that pricing varies by country (no additional cost in the US and Canada).

Decide which prevention method is right for your application

Use the following diagram to decide which product works best for protecting your business from SMS Pumping Fraud.

Learn more about SMS pumping protection:

• What Is SMS Pumping Fraud and How to Stop It
• Introducing Lookup SMS Pumping Risk Score
• SMS Pumping Protection is now generally available

Regardless of which solution you choose, Twilio will help protect your business from SMS pumping fraud so you can focus on your customers. We can't wait to see what you build.

¹ Terms and conditions apply