Investigate Robocall Mitigation Reports

When reviewing your robocall mitigation reports, you should investigate the numbers in the report to understand why they are being reported as a potential robocall.

Collect Information

There are many reasons why a number might show up in the robocall mitigation reports.

To start your investigation, you can start to collect information by asking these questions:

  1. Did the call come in from a subscriber line or SIP trunk? You should check whether the caller has the capability to modify their calling number.
  2. Is the calling number one of the calling numbers that you own? If the call came in from a trunk, does it use a calling number that was assigned for use by the specific customer?
  3. Was the call forwarded out of the network? ClearIP only recognizes calls as forwarded if the Diversion header is present in the SIP Invite. If present, then the Forwarded field is set to Yes for that call in the SIP Messages page.

Here are a few possible scenarios that can cause unfamiliar calling numbers to appear in the robocall mitigation report.

  • The PBX or switch forwards the call but does not set the Diversion header.

  • The caller is spoofing the calling number.

  • The switch receives an inbound call to a phone number that is not in the switch, but the service provider owns the number block. Since the number is not assigned to a subscriber, the switch may check the routing for outbound calls and send the call to ClearIP as the first choice route.

View SIP Messages

The robocall mitigation reports only tell you the calling number that was flagged as a robocall number, but the reports do not provide information about the called number or the timestamp when calls occurred. This information can be viewed in the SIP Messages page.

You can copy over the Asserted Calling Number shown in the SIP Report and look for that number in the SIP Messages page. SIP Reports Investigate Number

In the SIP Messages page, you can click on the Columns button and select the Robocall Mitigation option. Then you can enter the copied number into the Asserted Calling Number column to view details about the individual calls received from that calling numbers. SIP Messages Investigate Number

You should also check the call records in your switch to obtain additional information about where the call came from.

Make a Decision

Once you better understand the situation, then you can make a decision. If you determine that your subscriber’s call patterns may resemble robocall activity, then you can choose to contact the subscriber about their activity, ignore the robocall data within ClearIP, or notify the subscriber on steps to get their number corrected from being mislabeled as spam.

You are not required to use ClearIP to automatically block any of your subscriber outbound calls. ClearIP notifies you of potential robocall activity within your outbound calls and allows you to decide how to respond.

Remove Calling Number from Future Reports

If you decide that the calling number is not a robocall, then you can remove the number from appearing in any future reports. If the calling number shows up in the SIP Report for Calling Numbers with Reputation Score Above 0, then you turn off the reputation lookup service for the specific calling number.

In the Reputation Policies page, you can create a rule, set the Status field to Disabled and set the Calling Number field to the calling number found in the SIP Report. The other fields can be left as the default settings. Disable Reputation

If the calling number appears in the Invalid or High Risk Number Report, then you can disable the Inbound Shield lookup by creating a similar rule to disable the service for the specific calling number.

Disable Inbound Shield

Correct SPAM Mislabeling

If you suspect that your customer’s phone number is wrongfully being labelled as a robocall or spam, then you or your subscriber can choose to go through a process to improve the number’s reputation by contacting the relevant reputation data provider.

There are many different reputation data providers, so who you contact to resolve spam labelling depends on the exact provider that labeled the call as spam.

If a subscriber’s number is flagged as spam by one of the large wireless carriers, your subscriber can fill out a form at https://www.freecallerregistry.com/fcr/ to request vetting and potential whitelisting of their number in the relevant reputation databases.