The government has announced that, so far, 1.77 crore mobile connections that were purchased through fake or forged documents have been disconnected using artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools. In addition, four telecom service providers (TSPs) working with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) have blocked 45 lakh spoofed international calls from reaching the Indian telecom network.
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“About 11 lakhs accounts have been frozen by the banks and payments wallets which were linked to disconnected mobile connections taken on fake/forged documents,” the Ministry of Communications said in a statement.
It added that the next phase, involving a centralised system that will eliminate the remaining spoofed calls across all TSPs, is expected to be commissioned shortly.
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The government using AI to block international spoof calls
To combat the rising threat of fraudulent international calls, the DoT has launched a new system to identify and block these calls before they reach Indian phone users. This system is being rolled out in two phases:
- Phase 1: Focuses on blocking calls that are “spoofed” – meaning they falsely appear to be coming from a phone number belonging to the same telecom provider as the person receiving the call. This is done at the individual telecom provider level.
- Phase 2: Will block calls spoofed with numbers from any Indian telecom provider. This will be done at a central, nationwide level.
Apart from this, the government took further actions against the remaining connections which included:
- 77.61 lakh mobile connections exceeding the allowed limit per person were disconnected.
- 2.29 lakh mobile phones involved in cybercrime or fraud were blocked.
- 12.02 lakh out of 21.03 lakh reported stolen/lost mobile phones have been traced.
- 20,000 entities, 32,000 SMS headers, and 2 lakh SMS templates involved in sending malicious SMSs were disconnected.
- 11 lakh bank accounts and payment wallets linked to the disconnected mobile connections were frozen.
- Nearly 11 lakh WhatsApp accounts linked to the disconnected connections were disengaged.
- 71,000 Point of Sale (SIM agents) have been blacklisted.
- Legal action: 365 FIRs have been registered in various states and UTs.
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