Artificially Inflated Traffic (AIT) is a hot topic right now, and with good reason.
As businesses have increasingly shifted traditional manual or in-person interactions to mobile channels, SMS volumes have surged in recent years.
From appointment confirmations to one-time passwords (OTPs), the move to messaging brought speed and efficiency, but it also opened the door to a new kind of fraud.
AIT — a growing form of SMS fraud — is a direct byproduct of this shift.
It involves bad actors exploiting automated messaging workflows to generate fake traffic and real costs for the businesses sending them.
And it isn’t going away…
A recent report from XConnect and Mobilesquared found that 50% of telecom providers expect SMS fraud to increase in 2025, with AIT flagged as a key contributor.
In this blog, we’ll unpack how AIT doesn’t just inflate your SMS bill, it can quietly distort performance metrics, frustrate customers and drain internal resources if left unchecked.
Here’s what you need to know.
The Real Business Impact of Artificially Inflated Traffic
When you hear the words SMS fraud, your mind probably jumps straight to the financial impact.
And yes, inflated messaging costs are often the first and most obvious sign something’s wrong.
But unfortunately, the impact of AIT can run much deeper.
It might start with a few suspicious messages triggering unexpected charges, but the real damage often shows up in other areas: distorted analytics, missed customer moments, and operational teams stretched thin trying to solve problems they can’t see.
Here’s what AIT can really cost your business.
Increased Messaging Costs
This is where most businesses feel the impact first.
AIT attacks typically target automated flows — like OTPs, booking confirmations or status alerts — and flood them with repeated requests. You pay for every message sent, even if there’s no real user on the other end.
What makes this especially painful is how easy it is to miss.
Because everything appears to be working: delivery reports look fine, and no errors are raised, these inflated costs often go unnoticed until a finance team questions a spike in monthly spend.
By then, the damage is already done.
Distorted Engagement Metrics
AIT doesn’t just drain your budget, it also pollutes your data and can potentially negatively impact your CX too.
When fake traffic floods your messaging flows, it can inflate your send and delivery numbers without any downstream action.
This makes it harder to gauge real performance, skewing open rates, conversion metrics and customer behaviour insights.
The result?
Marketing and CX teams may optimise based on false signals. Campaigns get misjudged. Product decisions are made on flawed data. And ultimately, time and money are wasted trying to fix problems that don’t exist, or missing ones that do.
Degraded Customer Experience
Your customers don’t care why their One-Time Password is late or why they had to request it three times, they just want it to work.
When AIT inflates traffic volumes, it can overload systems, introduce delays or trigger throttling rules.
In practice, this means genuine users may experience slow or failed message delivery at the worst possible time: when they’re trying to log in, reset a password or confirm an appointment.
These aren’t just technical issues, they’re trust-breakers – and in competitive markets, a single failed interaction can be all it takes to lose a customer.
Operational Disruption and Internal Friction
The artificial inflation of traffic can create noise which eats up resources fast.
Let’s say your monthly SMS bill suddenly spikes, and multiple teams get pulled in:
- Finance flags the unexpected jump in spend.
- Customer Support starts reporting a spike in complaints — OTPs are delayed or not arriving.
- IT runs diagnostics but finds no obvious faults.
- Delivery systems appear healthy, and dashboards show normal activity.
But despite everything looking fine on the surface, something’s clearly not right.
Without visibility into what’s really going on, teams waste time investigating the wrong problems.
Effort is poured into fixing workflows, adjusting systems or pointing fingers — all while the fraudulent traffic continues in the background.
It drains time, damages trust and distracts your business from what matters.
Why Is AIT So Hard to Detect?
Just like more traditional forms of fraud, AIT can be hard to spot.
If messages are delivered successfully, systems are behaving as expected and reports show no obvious errors – then there may not be anything that sets alarm bells off
That’s until you notice an abnormal cost spike or your support team flags a surge in complaints.
What makes AIT especially tricky is that it’s designed to blend in.
On the surface, everything looks like normal user behaviour.
AIT Mimics Real User Behaviour
Bots involved in artificially inflating traffic don’t flood systems with obvious spam.
Instead, they behave like real users — requesting OTPs, submitting forms or triggering alerts — which makes detection incredibly difficult.
Every action appears legitimate, and every message gets marked as delivered.
Unless you’re actively analysing traffic patterns, the fraud remains buried in what looks like normal engagement.
Lack of SMS Routing Transparency Enables AIT
In many cases, SMS messages are routed through multiple intermediaries before reaching their final destination, especially when sent through providers that rely on cheaper or grey routes.
This lack of transparency can create blind spots, making it harder to spot inflated traffic.
When messages are routed via premium-rate or revenue-sharing numbers without your knowledge, AIT can go undetected for weeks.
That’s why working with a provider that offers direct, high-quality routing and full traffic transparency is essential to reducing exposure.
What You Can Do to Reduce the Risk of AIT
Artificially Inflated Traffic can be difficult to detect, but there are ways to reduce your exposure and minimise its impact.
While no solution is foolproof, being proactive about monitoring, visibility and provider choice can make a significant difference.
Here’s where to start…
Implement Measures to Prevent Bot Traffic
Implement security measures to prevent bots submitting your forms like CAPTCHAs, honeypot fields and timing checks. You can also implement validation mechanisms like opt-ins, whitelisting and contact confirms the sign-ups from registration or marketing campaigns.
Monitor Destination and Traffic Patterns
Look for volume spikes that can’t be explained by your campaigns, seasonality or user growth.
Sudden increases in OTP sends or confirmation messages without a clear driver could be a sign that something’s wrong.
Also pay attention to anomalies in behaviour, like repeat requests from the same flow, a sudden drop in conversion, or an unusual spike during low-traffic periods.
These may be early signs of inflated traffic flying under the radar.
You can block high-risk countries or operators with low volume through your SMS suppliers. Implement whitelisted destination numbers before sending the traffic from your messaging platform.
Review Messaging Costs and Destinations
It’s easy to overlook billing patterns when messages appear to be functioning correctly.
But subtle cost increases can be an early indicator that you’re being targeted by SMS fraudsters.
If possible, audit recent invoices alongside your typical usage.
- Are you seeing more messages to unfamiliar regions?
- Have costs crept up even though your customer activity hasn’t?
These small red flags can reveal much larger issues.
Understand How Your SMS Traffic Is Routed
One of the most effective steps you can take is to speak to your messaging provider.
Ask how your traffic is routed, whether premium-rate or high-risk regions are blocked, and what visibility you have into destination patterns.
While detection tools are still evolving across the industry, having a clear understanding of how your provider approaches traffic quality and fraud prevention is key.
Choose a Provider That Prioritises Security and Quality
Some platforms chase volume by using the cheapest routes available, including grey routes that lack oversight or visibility.
These shortcuts come at a cost, and they often create the perfect environment for AIT to thrive.
At Soprano, our platform only uses direct, high-quality routes, never grey ones. Our CPaaS platform also offers a comprehensive capability to manage your opt-ins (or opt-outs), blocking/whitelisting traffic to countries and pattern detection for AIT.
With ISO 27001 and SOC2 compliance we’re continuing to build on our platform’s existing security and routing strengths to help customers better understand and mitigate risks like AIT.
While AIT is an industry-wide challenge, the provider you choose can make a measurable difference.
Protecting Your Business from SMS Fraud and AIT
As you’ll now understand, Artificially Inflated Traffic can often fly under the radar.
Even though your messages are delivered, your dashboards look clean and your systems appear to be running normally, you could be falling foul to AIT.
The longer it goes unnoticed, the more damage it can do: draining budgets, distorting metrics and creating customer friction that’s hard to trace.
Now’s the time to take a closer look. Review your traffic. Question the unexpected. And if you’re unsure where to start, we’re here to help!
To make sure your SMS traffic is working for your business – not against it – click below to speak with a Soprano expert today!
