Overview
The PENGUIN High Cost servers are especially designed with additional security methods to allow you to expose your phone system to expensive places while still protecting your account's balance. The security philosophy we've used in building this service contains the following concepts:
PENGUIN Customer's are not able to route through our High Cost servers without first contacting support to have their account enabled for High Cost routes. (this protects your PENGUIN account from being compromised as part of a more sophisticated attack).
Once enabled, The PENGUIN system allows you to enable, and set a Fraud Limit for, each phone number. This lets the phone system Administrator allow a particular user the ability to place international calls without enabling it for the entire PENGUIN system.
The fraud limit assigned to each phone number is updated every 60 seconds - once that fraud limit is exhausted, the call is ended by the PENGUIN Network, and that number is unable to place further High Cost calls without intervention by an administrator. This will allow you to protect your PENGUIN balance, while still providing a limit to your risk .
An Administrator can specify a risk level limit to a phone number.
These concepts, along with a few top secret ones, will work to protect your PENGUIN balance from the evil people on the internet.
Trust Tiers
One of the core mechanisms to our fraud prevention is the use of Trust Tiers. A Trust Tier is a per minute rate limit applied to a group of destinations that may be dialed out through PENGUIN. The higher the Tier, the higher the per minute rate is.
The Trust Tiers are as follows:
Tier 1 - Domestic calls only. This is the default limit for customers.
Tier 10 - Low Rate High Cost routes enabled. This means any route under $0.03 per min (this covers about 51% of all our routes)
Tier 20 - Medium Rate + Low Rate High Cost routes enabled. This means any route under $0.50 per min (this covers about 91% of all our routes)
Tier 30 - All Routes. We don't recommend enabling this unless you absolutely have to. All routes are enabled. (as of this writing, the most expensive route is $30 - thirty dollars! - per minute)
PENGUIN does reserve the right to reduce a customer's Trust Tier if they are repetitively victim of fraud.
Enabling a Phone Number for High Cost Calling
Despite all the overview above, enabling High Cost calling is actually very easy. Just reach out to your PENGUIN billing representative and we can turn it on for you. The Fraud Limit you specify (Dollar amount) will reset automagically on the first day of the month. If you accidentally use up your Fraud Limit, you can contact
billing@callpenguin.com in order to bring the Fraud Limit back up to the amount you specified or increase it.
Dialing International Destinations
When you are dialing an international destination that is not a part of the North American Numbering Plan (Germany or France for example), preface the number with 011. 011 is the international prefix used to dial somewhere outside of North America. While our network will accept calls without 011, many of our upstream gateways will not. So, please preface your International numbers with 011.
Important Disclaimer
One of the fraud prevention methods we offer customers is the ability to set a dollar amount limit per month. This fraud prevention service is an excellent security technique that we are proud to offer. However, it should not be the only steps you have taken to protect your phone system from fraud. Firewalls, complex passwords, and regular maintenance are all critical to ensure you are safe. Please be aware that if your phone system is compromised, and our fraud prevention tools fail, you will still be responsible for the costs of the international traffic.