AI Firewall Helps EE UK Block 1 Million International Scam Calls a Day

Mobile operator EE – including broadband ISPs BT and Plusnet – have today revealed that they’ve blocked 11 million international scam calls since July, with the rate rising to 1 million a day. This comes after they launched a new AI powered firewall to filter out callers from international locations posing to be from UK-based numbers for legitimacy.

Ofcom has previously estimated that 44.6 million UK people may have received scam calls and text messages during just the three months of last summer (here), with 2% of recipients being duped by them. Nuisance calls include marketing calls (live and recorded), silent calls and abandoned calls. Scam calls also come in all sorts of different forms, from people claiming that your computer has been infected with viruses, to those pretending to represent your bank, HMRC, delivery companies, NHS etc.

Scam calls are often run by international scam networks for the purposes of fraudulently acquiring personal information, access to devices and, in some cases, bank details from the customer. But clamping down on them can be difficult and can sometimes catch legitimate callers too.

However, the firewall technology from EE uses a form of Artificial intelligence (AI) to review calls passing through the UK Calling Line Identification (CLI) system from other countries, and it then blocks those pretending to be based in the UK, halting scam calls so that they never reach customers.

This technology benefits every BT, Plusnet and EE customer, but also benefits those on other networks by detecting all inbound calls from international locations using UK numbers and stopping them from being further forwarded to other networks.

Chris Howe, EE’s Customer Care Change Director, said:

“We are investing in the latest technology to ensure as many scam calls as possible are blocked before they reach our customers. Everyone should feel confident answering their phone or reading a text message without the fear of potentially getting scammed.

This new international call blocking technology, combined with the 200 million scam texts blocked from our mobile network, means our customers can count on EE to have the safest network.”

As a result, EE now claims to be the “only provider actively blocking scam calls from reaching networks other than its own,” although this is a fairly broad claim and one that could perhaps be disputed by rivals. The move comes after EE introduced a new text (SMS) filter, which has already blocked 200 million scam texts since its launch last year – that’s 50 million more than they predicted last July (Vodafone also has a similar system).

Consumers who receive a suspicious call are still advised to text the phone number and incident to 7726, free of charge, so your mobile operator can investigate. The Government are also working to increase the financial penalties for those pestering people with nuisance calls and text (SMS) messages, but this probably won’t do much to stop calls made from outside the UK (here).