(This thread will also serve as a catalogue of any and all RingCentral numbers that the authors of this report may find in the coming days.)
RingCentral, Inc. is an American provider of cloud-based communication and collaboration products and services based in Belmont, California.
In this case study, we will compare and evaluate RingCentral’s fraud prevention team’s response time when it comes to shutting down scam traffic on their network.
We will also compare RingCentral’s response time with the following VOIP companies; Vonage & Callture.
To quote Ring Central’s fraud response team, “At RingCentral we take fraud seriously and make every effort to ensure our services are being used for legitimate purposes only.”
Background
Based on the team’s personal experience with RingCentral through 3 different email addresses that are designated for reporting fraud on their network, Ring Central’s response time and track record has been negative overall.
Unlike other VOIP providers who respond to fraud by taking action on the same day, RingCentral does not have a steady track record or an average response time that is acceptable.
In some cases, RingCentral will respond to an email with a stock answer on the same day. In other cases, RingCentral doesn’t respond to emails at all, and this happens regularly.
These unanswered cases were reported to RingCentral but have since gone unanswered.
As with all of our reports, we include the following data; timestamps, screenshots (being pop ups or refund scam invoices) & recordings of the scammers introducing themselves as whatever organization that they are impersonating at the time of the report. (Microsoft, PayPal, McAfee etc…)
Screenshots for these cases and recordings have been provided below.
. Unanswered emails:
. Refund scam invoices:
Recording: 8336437246
Recording: 8883221241
(A scam in progress can be heard in the background)
Cases & RingCentral’s Response Record
Over the course of a year, a total of 260 reports were sent to RingCentral through the following 3 email addresses that RingCentral has designated for reporting fraud. They are; [email protected], [email protected] & [email protected].
(See records below)
Stats for email address: [email protected]
A total of 121 reports were sent to [email protected]
. 24 of those emails were answered by RingCentral. That includes stock auto responses and actual confirmations that the numbers that were reported had been shut down by Ring Central’s fraud response team.
. 10 of those responses were stock auto-replies which produced no further updates on the status of those cases.
. 6 of those responses had the following message from RingCentral; “Thank you for your report. At RingCentral we take fraud seriously and make every effort to ensure our services are being used for legitimate purposes only. The phone number will be investigated, and appropriate action will be taken based on the results of the investigation. Due to privacy and communications regulations, RingCentral may be unable to share the results of our investigation, or any action taken and will do so in its sole discretion.”
Receiving the aforementioned response did not produce any further updates on the status of those cases.
. Only 7 cases were answered by RingCentral with the following message: “This number has been disconnected” after sending 1 email to [email protected]
. The final case was also answered by RingCentral in the aforementioned response. The email address however would return a “failed to send” error.
An agent at RingCentral would later follow up on the email with the same aforementioned response with no further updates being made available to the team in regards to the outcome of the case. That would also be the final time that RingCentral would respond to the team on [email protected]
Stats for email address: [email protected]
A total of 114 reports were sent to [email protected]
. Only 7 of those reports received responses by Ring Central’s fraud response team.
. 2 of those responses were stock auto-replies which produced no further updates on the status of those cases.
. 4 of the responses were RingCentral stating; "Thank you for your report. At RingCentral we take fraud seriously and make every effort to ensure our services are being used for legitimate purposes only.
The phone number will be investigated, and appropriate action will be taken based on the results of the investigation. Due to privacy and communications regulations, RingCentral may be unable to share the results of our investigation, or any action taken and will do so in its sole discretion."
Receiving the aforementioned response did not produce any further updates on the status of those cases.
. The final report sent to RingCentral at [email protected] returned a “failed to send” error. That would be the final time that the team would use the aforementioned email address.
Stats for email address: [email protected]
The final email address; [email protected], was given to the team directly from RingCentral’s technical support team after reporting a toll free number on their network that was being used to run a BestBuy Geek Squad technical support scam.
Despite receiving the aforementioned email address from their technical support team, the team still faced the same problems when reporting other toll free numbers that were used in other scams to RingCentral.
A total of 25 reports were sent to [email protected]
. Only 6 of those reports received responses by Ring Central’s fraud response team.
. 6 of those responses were RingCentral stating; "Thank you for your report. At RingCentral we take fraud seriously and make every effort to ensure our services are being used for legitimate purposes only.
The phone number will be investigated, and appropriate action will be taken based on the results of the investigation. Due to privacy and communications regulations, RingCentral may be unable to share the results of our investigation, or any action taken and will do so in its sole discretion."
Receiving the aforementioned response did not produce any further updates on the status of those cases.
. 1 of these 6 cases was also answered with the aforementioned response. 5 days would pass with the reported number still being live and saw no action being taken by RingCentral’s fraud response team. The team followed up on this case by providing more evidence to RingCentral to which they would finally take action against the number, stating that they had disconnected the number.
. Only 1 case was ever responded by RingCentral with the following message: “This number has been disconnected” after sending 1 email to [email protected]
Conflicting Statements From RingCentral
RingCentral has often given conflicting statements in regards to providing updates and the outcomes to certain scam reports.
In some cases, RingCentral has stated that they cannot always provide the results or the outcome of those cases do to “privacy and communications regulations”
Never has the team ever heard of a telecom stating that they cannot inform the person that filed the report that a number was or was not shut down for fraud.
RingCentral however is perfectly capable of letting the person know the outcome of the investigation because they have done so during the few times that the team’s reports were answered by RingCentral’s team.
Response time from other VOIP providers.
As previously mentioned, other VOIP providers have an excellent track record of removing scammers and scam traffic from their network, namely Vonage and Callture.
The aforementioned VOIP providers answer all reports and assure that all scam traffic and numbers are shut down on the same day that a report is received, often within a matter of hours.
In some instances, like Vonage & Callture, it takes mere minutes for a report to be received and acted upon by their support staff and team.
The team has enclosed several screenshots of the aforementioned VOIP providers support teams acting on scam reports below for comparisons.
Vonage:
Callture:
Conclusion:
RingCentral is currently lagging behind when it comes to basic fraud response and action. It is imperative that RingCentral’s fraud response team act upon the scam traffic on a timely basis.
It is recommended that the fraud response team not only keep the person who filed the report up to date with the status of their cases, but also notify the person who filed the report that the number in question has been shut down.
RingCentral has sometimes claimed that they cannot disclose the outcome of the cases due to some technicality. But as we’ve seen above, the RingCentral team, on the very few cases that were answered, did in fact notify the team that the numbers were indeed shut down.
RingCentral must be consistent with their response time and their policies moving forward. There is no excuse for this VOIP provider to be so inconsistent and negligent when it comes to fraud, especially when many of their competitors are miles ahead of them in the fraud department.