Crackdown On Cybercrime: TRAI, DoT Blocks 227,000 Handsets, 10 Million Connections

To help eradicate cybercrime and save citizens from financial fraud, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Department of Telecom (DoT) have jointly decided to disconnect 227,000 mobile handsets implicated in cybercrime and financial scams.

This would greatly scale up the government’s effort in regulating the telecom sector and combat the rising menace of fraudulent mobile connections and spam calls.

According to the official statement released on September 10, 2024, more than 10 million mobile connections, belonging to scammers and cyber criminals, were also disconnected.

This could be done owing to assistance from the “Sancharsaathi” platform, which has a facility for detecting and reporting suspicious mobile connections. Sancharsaathi helps authorities in tracing mobile connections that are used for unfair means. It also serves to limit their interaction with unsuspecting mobile phone subscribers.

In addition to these fraud subscribers, TRAI has also cracked down on spam and telemarketing calls, which has turned out to be a serious problem for mobile users across the country.

In fact, TRAI has also warned telecom operators to take strict action against the bulk connections being utilised for telemarketing, robocalls, and pre-recorded calls. Accordingly, do-not-disturb (DND) services have disconnected more than 350,000 numbers involved in such activities in the last two weeks. Also, 50 telemarketing entities have been blacklisted for their part in spam and fraudulent activities, according to a report in The Mint.

These measures also include blocking about 350,000 unverified SMS headers assigned to organisations for bulk messaging, and 1.2 million content templates that were misused for fraudulent purposes. This all-round crackdown on the telecom sector is aimed at restoring consumer confidence and saving citizens both from cybercrime and unwanted communications.

In addition to these measures, TRAI has further introduced an array of revised guidelines that would improve the quality of telecom services across India. New regulations on service quality, effective from October 1, 2024, would replace existing quarterly monitoring by service providers with a more robust and stern monthly regime. Incidentally, the new regime, which started from April 1, 2024, was aimed at ensuring higher levels of service quality for mobile subscribers, but now this has been further enhanced.

Union Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah, too, applauded the overall efforts of the government in making cyberspace a safer place for the citizens of the country. Taking to social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Shah sought to underline the ongoing battle against cybercrime. “It is here that the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre-I4C comes in. Extremely pleased to share that Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan has joined I4C’s campaign to promote ‘Cyber-Secure Bharat’ by helping spread awareness regarding online safety,” he wrote on X.

The DoT has now issued consultation papers on the immediate suspension of services in the cases of unregistered telemarketers when complaints against them cross the threshold limit. It further plans to introduce tighter measures in the future against fraudulent telemarketers in order to increase consumer protection.