Sharing Economy Giant
$300K
Estimated SMS toll fraud eliminated daily for a platform with 150 million users.
Read the Case Study →When attackers exploit SMS verification workflows, you foot the bill for their premium-rate scams. Arkose Titan shuts down SMS toll fraud and international revenue share fraud (IRSF) before the charges hit, while real customers and trusted AI agents can keep signing up.
Most businesses don't discover they've been hit until the telecom bill arrives.
SMS toll fraud — also called SMS pumping, artificially inflated traffic (AIT) or international revenue share fraud (IRSF) — happens when attackers use bots or AI agents to trigger large volumes of one-time passcode (OTP) messages to premium-rate numbers they control. Your business pays for every message, while the attacker, a colluding criminal organization and sometimes the carrier split the revenue.
Any business that uses phone-based verification is a target, and because the charge is incurred the moment the SMS is sent, account-level defenses are already too late.
The diagram below illustrates how an SMS toll fraud attack unfolds across seven steps, from target identification through profit distribution.
Criminal organization and attacker identify businesses with SMS touchpoints.
Criminal organization acquires premium-rate numbers from a possibly unethical carrier.
Attacker integrates these numbers into applications and systems.
Attacker initiates SMS flows on business sign-ups using these numbers.
Fraudulent SMS flows traverse the entire registration system.
Carrier charges the business for the high-risk expensive numbers.
Attacker, criminal organization and colluding carrier share the profits.
Calculate your SMS cost savings with our ROI calculator.
Arkose Titan makes SMS toll fraud unprofitable, while legitimate consumers and trusted agents get through.
Real users sign up without friction, and you set the rules for which AI agents get through.
Nearly 1,000 detection signals spot bulk sign-ups, premium-rate number targeting and IRSF hotspot traffic before a single SMS is sent.
Proof-of-Work and AI-resistant challenges make every fake verification attempt cost more than it's worth.
Network-wide fraud signals keep your defenses current as attack patterns change.
Arkose Labs is the only company to back SMS toll fraud protection with a $1 million warranty. If we don't stop the fraud, we cover the cost.
Combining an improved security posture for end users with the ability to remove bad actors from the platform and demonstrate direct cost savings for the organization is a trifecta of good.
SMS toll fraud, also called SMS pumping or international revenue share fraud, happens when attackers trigger large volumes of SMS messages to premium-rate numbers they control, billing the fraudulent charges to the business that sent them.
Criminals acquire premium-rate phone numbers from a complicit carrier, then trigger fraudulent SMS flows through a business's own sign-up process, which the business is billed for. The attacker, the criminal organization and the carrier all share in the resulting profits.
Common signs include sudden spikes in OTP requests to unusual country codes, verification messages that are sent but never completed, and bursts of sign-ups using sequential or premium-rate phone numbers. Because the charge is incurred as soon as the message is sent, detection needs to happen before the SMS goes out, not after the telecom bill arrives.
Arkose Titan filters fraudulent SMS-triggering traffic before messages are ever sent, cutting fraudulent carrier charges that can otherwise run into millions of dollars a month.
The strongest solutions stop fraudulent SMS sends before they're triggered, not just after the bill arrives. Arkose Labs backs this with a $1 million SMS toll fraud warranty and 24/7/365 monitoring from its Security Operations Center.
Yes. Attackers can use AI agents to automate sign-ups and trigger SMS sends at scale, while other agents act on behalf of real customers. Arkose Titan identifies AI agents in your verification flows so you can decide which to allow and which to block.
Defend against international revenue share fraud (IRSF) and other forms of SMS abuse across every verification workflow.
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Stopping bots, AI agents, and fraud before they reach your users.