Fromenance for utilities
Outage, billing, and disconnection notices customers can verify
Fromenance is a communication provenance platform for utilities: register billing, outage, and disconnection notices at send time, and a customer who forwards a suspicious one to verify@yourutility.com gets Verified, Not verified, or Known fraud in seconds. Disconnection lures fail verification the moment they arrive, and their phone numbers and domains become indicators for your team.
What your customers are receiving
The impersonation scenarios utilities fraud teams see every week, and what a Fromenance verdict does to each one.
The disconnection threat
"Your service will be disconnected today unless you pay now" with a payment link or a phone number. The most common utility lure. Registered disconnection notices verify; this one fails and the phone number is extracted as an indicator.
The overpayment refund
"You overpaid, claim your refund" pointing at a card harvesting page. Not in the registry, so Not verified, and the domain is on your fraud list after one analyst click.
The outage update
During a real outage, lures ride the news cycle. Registered outage notices verify in seconds so customers can tell the real update from the fake one.
The smart meter or rebate notice
Program enrollment lures with a lookalike domain. Screenshot upload handles the ones that arrive as images.
The copied footer
A lure that copies your verify footer resolves to Not verified and raises a replay flag. It tells your team which notice template is being imitated.
The 'is this real' call
Each call costs roughly $8 to $15 and peaks exactly when the contact center is busiest. verify@ answers in seconds without an agent.
Register these streams first
Coverage is the whole game. Start with the communications customers already scrutinize, because those are the ones they will forward.
- 01
Billing notices
Bill ready, payment due, payment received, autopay changes. Highest volume, most imitated. Register from the ESP webhook or the billing platform's journal BCC.
- 02
Disconnection and collections notices
The lure attackers reach for first. Register these and Authoritative Mode becomes reachable for the stream customers fear most.
- 03
Outage and service notices
Planned work, outage updates, restoration. Register through the ESP adapter so real updates verify during an event.
- 04
Program and rebate communications
Energy efficiency, smart meter, and rebate enrollment messages. Batch endpoint or journal path from the program vendor.
Outcomes you can put in front of the board
Every metric below is captured by the product itself, so the pilot report is a dashboard export.
Call deflection at peak
Contact center 'is this real' volume on the pilot stream before and during, including during outages when it matters most.
Fewer payment scams completed
Customers who verify before paying do not pay the lure. Time from first submission to analyst confirmation of a campaign shortens the window.
Abuse mailbox triage
Volume before and during, and analyst time per week. Submissions arrive with indicators and a verdict.
Intelligence yield
Phone numbers, domains, and payment page URLs from lures, exportable as CSV or STIX for your gateway and for law enforcement referrals.
Trust in real notices
Customers who can verify a disconnection notice keep reading them, which protects collections and paperless billing.
A documented control
Immutable verdicts and audited analyst actions give your customer protection program a record for regulators and commissions.
Compliance framing
Public utility commissions and consumer protection offices ask utilities how customers are protected from payment scams and impersonation. Fromenance gives you a documented, customer facing control with immutable verdicts, an audited analyst trail, configurable retention, and exportable indicators for referrals. We provide the record; your regulatory team frames it for your commission.
The pilot, week by week
60 to 90 days on one stream, timed so the pilot spans at least one billing cycle.
Step 1: Week 0
Contract and DPA, tenant created, TXT record published, redirect rule live, forwarding test passed.
Step 2: Week 1
One stream registered, footer deployed to that template, reply identity live on your domain.
Step 3: Weeks 2 to 12
Run. Weekly 30 minute review of Submissions and Indicators with your fraud lead. Reports at day 30, 60, and 90.
Questions evaluators ask
- Which stream should a utility pilot first?
- Billing notices or disconnection notices. Both are imitated constantly, both are template driven, and customers already scrutinize them. Outage notices are the second stream because real updates need to verify during an event.
- Our customers get lures by phone and text too. Does this help?
- Phone numbers and QR payloads in forwarded email lures are extracted as indicators today. The SMS channel, with the same code in a shorter footer and verification by short code or web paste, is on the roadmap. Voice is scoped later.
- How much DNS do we need to touch?
- One TXT record for trust. If you want replies from a subdomain such as verify.yourutility.com, three more records for the sending domain. The web verify page needs none.
- What does the customer see?
- A reply from your domain in your branding with the locked verdict and a next step, or the same template rendered on yourutility.com/verify. The Fromenance name never appears.
- What if our billing vendor cannot call an API?
- Add journal-{slug}@ingest.fromenance.com as a BCC or journaling target on the vendor's sending system and we register from the full message. Pair it with a static per template code or the reserve flow for the footer.
Run a 60 to 90 day pilot on one communication stream.
Fraud alerts or transaction alerts are the best first stream. You get a written report of verification volume, verdict distribution, campaigns discovered, and intelligence yield.