Three UK Continuously Enhances Customer Protection Against Scams and Nuisance Communications

Nearly 10,000 malicious texts blocked every hour

Three UK has 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 its customers from rising online fraud. The progress follows Three becoming the first UK operator to integrate blocking technology from Mavenir, in its network in 2019, which ensures that many malicious messages fail to reach customers.

During summer 2023, Ofcom reported that eight in ten people experienced some form of phone scam and as technology continues to advance, so do the methods used by scammers to exploit unsuspecting individuals. Mavenir uses AI to automatically filter and detect messages but as fraudsters constantly adapt their methods, it does not block every message. In addition, 72,000 calls have been reported to 7726, a free spam-reporting service.

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.

Click here to read Three UK’s release on the topic.