A Guide to STIR/SHAKEN

STIR/SHAKEN was introduced in mid-2021 as a set of protocols and regulations designed to improve transparency and trust in communications by requiring phone carriers to authenticate the phone calls they originate. 

These standards were introduced in particular to mitigate third-party caller ID spoofing, which is a problem where VoIP-based callers can use other people’s phone numbers to originate their calls. These callers are essentially hiding behind somebody else’s telephone identity, and such deception is a common practice for criminal fraudsters and telemarketers who are engaged in illegal calling practices.

In short, eliminating caller ID spoofing improves consumer confidence and call answer rates and increases the ROI of phone-based marketing. PhoneBurner routes all calls through carrier partners who are full participants in the STIR/SHAKEN framework and who sign calls on your behalf.

In this article we’ll cover:

1. Why these protocols were introduced?
2. What changed?
3. How does this help you?

Why were these protocols introduced?

Consumer confidence in phone communications cratered following an explosion of spam calls, robocalls, and unlawful Caller ID spoofing. At one point,industry estimates suggested nearly half of all calls were spam or fraud.

Telephone fraud costs Americans billions of dollars every year.

To make matters worse, legitimate businesses engaged in legitimate communications were finding it increasingly difficult to connect with consumers, and regularly saw their numbers flagged as potential scam.

What changed?

In 2021 the industry adopted STIR/SHAKEN as a standard for exchanging phone traffic. The acronyms stand for Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (“STIR”) and Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs (“SHAKEN”). 

This standard was mandated by the FCC to provide carriers who receive calls (for delivery to their consumers) with digital validation to ensure the calls are originating from a trusted source. There are 3 levels of attestation that can be applied to a call:

Full or “A” Attestation:
The service provider knows the customer and their right to use the phone number.

Partial or “B” Attestation:
The service provider knows the customer but not the source of the phone number.  

Gateway or “C” Attestation:
The service provider has originated the call onto the network but can’t authenticate the call source e.g., international gateway.

Calls that do not have “A” or “B” attestation can be viewed suspiciously by consumer carriers, since the originating carrier is not vouching for the validity of the party making the call. They may be more likely to be flagged or blocked as fraud or spam as a result. Moreover, with near-instant traceback to regulatory agencies, abusive callers who will be identified and known as the originator of illegal calls will face accountability as well.

Calls with full “A” attestation may be identified with a checkmark or “Caller Verified” badge on the recipient’s incoming call screen, although this does not guarantee that such calls will not be flagged as spam.

“B” attestation is standard for calls using your own phone numbers routed through our Tier 1 carrier partners.

How does this help you?

PhoneBurner simplifies your compliance so that, without taking any additional actions, all of your numbers will receive the necessary “A” or “B” attestation when used through PhoneBurner. As a result, your calls will be presented to the industry as non-spoofed and therefore less risky. When you bring your own number, our verification process confirms you’re authorized to use it. This lets us pass that trust along to our carriers, so your calls receive proper attestation and aren’t treated as potentially spoofed.

When you use your own, pre-existing number with PhoneBurner, we verify that you control it before allowing you to use it as your Caller ID. Because the number wasn’t provisioned through PhoneBurner, , our carrier can vouch for you as a customer but not for your independent assignment of that number. That’s why these calls receive “B” attestation rather than “A.” It’s still a trusted level of attestation that identifies your calls as non-spoofed, and you can continue to use your existing caller IDs and expect the same or similar results you experience today. 

Calls routed through our Tier 1 providers benefit from improved call quality and stronger reputation, since these carriers aren’t associated with the smaller intermediary networks that often carry spam traffic.

When you use PhoneBurner numbers, we will register them with the FreeCallerRegistry as a legitimate business caller in order to reduce spam/scam flags associated with unknown, high-volume callers. We will obtain either an "A" or "B" attestation for your PhoneBurner numbers.

If you would like to learn more about how to reduce the likelihood of being marked as Spam/Scam, visit this article here.