Jyotiraditya M Scindia, Minister of Communications and Development of North Eastern Region has launched ‘International Incoming Spoofed Calls Prevention System’. This is another milestone of Department of Telecommunications’ (DoT) efforts towards building a safe digital space and protecting citizens from cyber-crime.
Of late, cyber criminals have been committing cyber-crimes by making international spoofed calls displaying Indian mobile numbers (+91-xxxxxxxxx). These calls appear to be originating within India but are actually being made from abroad by manipulating the calling line identity (CLI) or commonly known as phone number. These spoofed calls have been used for financial scams, impersonating government officials, and creating panic. There have also been cases of cyber-crime threatening disconnection of mobile numbers by DoT/ Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) officials, fake digital arrests, drugs/narcotics in courier, impersonation as police officials, arrest in sex racket etc.
DoT and telecom service providers (TSPs) have collaborated and devised a system to identify and block such incoming international spoofed calls from reaching the Indian telecom subscribers. The system was made operational and it has been observed that within 24 hours of operation of the system, about 13.5 million or 90 per cent from all the incoming international calls with Indian phone numbers were identified as spoofed calls and blocked by TSPs from reaching Indian telecom subscribers. Indian telecom subscribers should see a significant reduction in such spoofed calls with +91-xxxxxxx numbers with implementation of this system.
