The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), in collaboration with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), has taken decisive action to protect citizens from potential SMS fraud through the Sanchar Saathi initiative.
In addition, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), MHA, provided information about misuse of eight SMS Headers for sending fraudulent communications for committing cyber-crime.
According to the Ministry of Communications, more than 10,000 fraudulent messages were sent using these eight headers in the past three months. Meanwhile, these SMS headers pertained to eight different principal entities (PEs), and analysis was done for other SMS headers/templates owned by these PEs.
In addition, all the eight PEs along with the 73 SMS headers and 1522 SMS content templates owned by them have been blacklisted. Also, none of these PEs, SMS Headers or templates can now be used to send SMS through any telecom operator.
According to DoT, it is not permitted to use mobile numbers for telemarketing activities. If a consumer uses their telephone connection to send promotional messages, their connection will be liable for disconnection on the first complaint, and their name and address may be blacklisted for a period of two years.
DoT has prevented further potential victimisation of citizens by blacklisting these entities. Furthermore, citizens can report suspected fraud communications at Chakshu facility on Sanchar Saathi to help DoT in prevention of misuse of telecom resources for cyber-crime and financial frauds.
