The government has informed the parliament that as many as 65 illegal telecom setups, that allowed international calls with spoofed Indian numbers, were unearthed during FY24.
In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Devusinh Chauhan, Union Minister of State for Communications, said that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has directed international long-distance operators (ILDOs) to drop incoming calls with no calling line identification (CLI), or improper CLI or having certain prefixes. Moreover, DoT is blocking the apps allowing the origination of spoofed calls. Such apps are also blocked on Google Play Store and iOS App Store.
The minister informed that to prevent incoming international calls with spoofed Indian landline numbers, DoT has directed ILDOs to drop international incoming calls with no CLI, improper CLI or having CLI prefixes such as +11, 011, 11, +911 and +915.
Further, Chauhan stated that the DoT has launched the citizen-centric Sanchar Saathi portal, which facilitates citizens to report international calls received with Indian CLI and to check mobile connections taken in their name and report the mobile connections which are not taken by them. Telecom service providers are disconnecting such reported mobile connections after necessary subscriber re-verification. As per the minister, around 1.31 million such mobile connections have been disconnected.
