NEWS BRIEF
TransUnion’s announcement final week to accumulate Actual Networks’ cell division exhibits the credit score reporting company is specializing in enhanced voice and SMS fraud safety providers for companies.
As a part of the acquisition, TransUnion features the Kontxt platform + Metcalf infrastructure, a synthetic intelligence-driven messaging suite to safe cell service visitors. It will enable TransUnion to increase Trusted Name Options, which protects companies from name spoofing and was launched in partnership with AT&T in 2024. TransUnion will combine Kontxt with Trusted Name Options, to be renamed Trusted Communications Options, to underscore the concentrate on SMS, multimedia, and voice networks.
“We wish to have scale in an omnichannel trend,” says James Garvert, senior VP of communications options at TransUnion. “This asset on this acquisition will assist us begin shifting into the textual content messaging world as nicely.”
The deal covers solely the cell belongings. Actual Networks will retain its streaming communications and safe correct facial recognition (SAFR) companies.
TransUnion cited a Jupiter Analysis report estimating losses from cell phone fraud worldwide to exceed $80 billion in 2025.
Actual Networks launched Kontxt in 2017, initially as a textual content messaging categorization and prioritization providing for cell carriers; it added Kontxt Voice in 2021 to assist carriers detect and block robocalls. The corporate has established integration partnerships with varied cell operators worldwide, together with Verizon, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, SoftBank, Telefonica, KDDI, Vivo, and SK Telekom.
Kontxt can detect units and people sending unregistered bulk visitors or participating in suspicious marketing campaign patterns. It performs cross-channel correlation to establish when the identical telephone or machine is utilized in suspicious SMS campaigns, voice calls, or anomalous Internet periods. Kontxt has an anomaly-detection stack within the community and utility layers that classifies and blocks fraudulent messages and calls. It additionally applies voice‑fingerprinting to detect robocallers and performs real-time intent classification, Actual Networks mentioned. Kontxt’s machine studying fashions are skilled on massive volumes of telco visitors designed to detect spam messages and voice calls.
Actual Networks claims a 78% blocking fee, with the speed enhancing because it features extra coaching knowledge and fashions.
Along with increasing its fraud safety portfolio, TransUnion affords a Machine Danger providing that associates identities with units and matches them with community indicators to watch habits. In December, TransUnion added new capabilities, together with cross-session machine identification, to acknowledge and observe units throughout a number of periods and networks with out requiring cookies. TransUnion additionally launched adaptive machine studying capabilities to spice up machine fraud safety and superior anomaly and evasion detection, designed to detect distant entry instruments and automatic bots that could possibly be used to govern customers.
TransUnion declined to specify how Kontxt will combine with Machine Danger.
“In the end, these are all roadmap capabilities or gadgets that we’re intertwining in our complete fraud portfolio,” Garvert says.
The acquisition is about to shut within the first half of 2026. Monetary phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed.
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