Mobile operator Three UK has today revealed that the anti-spam filters on their network have blocked more than 173 million spam texts, equivalent to 10,000 every hour of the day, in the last two years, as part of its efforts to protect customers from rising online fraud – thanks in no small part to their Mavenir platform.
In case anybody has forgotten, Three UK started to implement Mavenir‘s network-level anti-spam filter technology during 2019. The system uses AI learning to automatically filter and detect scam or spam messages, although no system is perfect and some nuisance communications will invariably still reach their customers.
In addition, the announcement also notes that 72,000 calls (i.e. those suspecting of being spam/scams) have been reported to 7726, the free anti-spam reporting service. The number ‘7726’ was chosen because it spells ‘SPAM’ on an alphanumeric phone keypad – that’s a handy way of remembering it.
Darren Purkis, Chief Financial Officer at Three UK, said:
“The battle against fraud is a constantly evolving one with scammers using increasingly sophisticated methods to defraud people. Blocking these messages represents significant progress in our fight against online criminals and we will continue to invest in people and technology to fight this rapidly evolving problem.”
To further protect customers, Three UK has also sent out millions of messages and alerts to its customers to warn them of the latest scams and provide advice on how to protect themselves, as well as introduced one-click SPAM reporting for Android devices, streamlining and enhancing reporting options for its customers.