Have you gotten hit with an enormous bill from your provider and have no idea where the charges came from? You may be a victim of telephone fraud—yes, telephone fraud. We have all heard of credit card fraud and identity fraud, but what is telephone fraud? People can hack into your telephone system and make international, long distance calls, and even listen to and monitor your conversations.
PBX (Private Branch Exchange) telephone systems, although extremely useful, are vulnerable to hacking. One way you can avoid telephone fraud is by switching to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone service. With VoIP, you are required to enter a PIN number to make international or long distant calls. There is also the option to disable these calls all together. Another useful feature of VoIP is that it includes automatic call logging. This will help identify the extension that is being used and the source of the external call that is compromising the PBX.
Advantages of VoIP over Traditional PBX
In addition to protecting your business from telephone fraud, VoIP has many other advantages:
- Call blasts and simultaneous ringing
- Ability to receive voice mails transcribed in an email of text (voice mail to email)
- Calls can be directed to a cell phone
- An abundance of features:
- Caller ID
- Contact lists
- Call waiting/blocking/forwarding
- 3-way calling
There are several telephone systems options for VoIP. Avaya IP Office and Zultys both carry VoIP systems. Zultys offers IP phones in its ZIP series, which includes ZIP 35i, ZIP 36G, ZIP 59i, and much more. With a VoIP telephone system, you can boost your businesses productivity while staying connected anytime and from anywhere. VoIP phones also allow you to connect your mobile phones so you are never out of touch! Employees can be on the move while staying connected and productive, and can be called by using one single number through internal extension dialing.
With all of these great advantages of VoIP, why wouldn’t you want to switch? To learn more about Zultys Unified Communications, visit the Teltek website!
—
Here are additional tips on how to prevent telephone fraud:
- Do not accept collect calls from anyone you do not know
- Do not provide any information to individuals who claim to be law enforcement or telephone companies
- Block third-number billing to your phone number
- Limit the amount of attempts it take to get into a voice mail
- Use voice mail pass codes (not predictable ones, such as 1234)
Teltek is a Certified Avaya Business Partner, NEC Dealer, Zultys, and Microsoft Partner with two locations in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. We specialize in providing one call technology support for small to mid-sized businesses and nonprofits in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia and Pennsylvania.