BT has blocked 2.4 million landline scam calls

BT’s home phone service, Digital Voice, is plugged into an AI tool that monitors incoming calls and flags up any suspected spam. Hiya leans on machine learning to improve its scam detection the more malicious calls it sniffs out, we’re told. In terms of the scale of the spam, in one day it apparently blocked more than 46,500 scam calls.

2.5 million BT customers are already on the call vetting service, which it says is set to double as more customers upgrade to digital landlines. BT expects to block more than 1.5 million scam calls monthly once all customers have moved over to Digital Voice. 

The way the service works is on receiving a potential spam call, customers get a visual warning on their landline phone display, and they can then reject or accept an inbound call. Scam calls are automatically diverted to a customer’s junk voicemail, and any call from a registered business will have their name displayed to verify it as genuine.

According to BT, landlines are still used by 4 in 5 people over the age of 65 in the UK, which is a demographic facing a particularly high risk of vishing scams, or phone-based fraud. It says 28% of all unknown calls now being flagged as spam.

“Our top priority is ensuring our customers feel secure and confident when using our services,” said Lucy Baker MBE, BT Consumer’s All-IP Director. “This new Hiya technology is now integrated with Digital Voice and is proving to be incredibly effective at stopping scam calls. We remain committed to protecting customers during the switch to digital landlines.”

Alex Algard, CEO of Hiya added: "We're thrilled to be supporting BT in its mission to shield users from unwanted calls. It’s great to see that our technology has successfully blocked fraud and spam calls, which will in turn give customers the confidence to answer their phones and engage in meaningful conversations without the interruption of unwanted disturbances. This progress underscores our dedication to enhancing digital safety and improving the user experience."

Whether it’s on landlines, mobiles, email, or any other attack vector, the consensus from the array of security reports out there is that attempts from nefarious actors to defraud people out of money or otherwise hack something are on the rise.

According to some data from Hiya provided in the release, UK residents received an average of 3 spam calls per month from January to June this year, with 28% of all unknown calls flagged as spam, which it equates to approximately 195 million spam calls per month.

Last month, BT painted a similar picture of escalating malicious activity at its Secure Tomorrow 'cybersecurity festival' at its Adastral Park research facility in Ipswitch. There, CEO Alison Kirkby said security was ‘fundamental and integral’ to BT. “We connect physical estates, virtual estates in the cloud… if we don’t give them secure connectivity we put our customers and society at risk,” she said.

At the same time the firm put out a report claiming it logs 2000 signals of potential cyber-attacks a second, or 200 million per day. The data also pointed to a 1234% annual rise in new malicious internet protocol (IP) scanners recorded across BT’s networks in the 12 months to July, and BT extrapolates that this is down to cyber criminals increasingly scanning for vulnerabilities through automated, ‘one time use’ disposable bots which can get around existing blocking and security measures.