DoT takes action against more than 10,000 fraudulent messages in last 3 months

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), along with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), has blacklisted eight Principal Entities (PEs) for sending more than 10,000 fraudulent messages in the last three months.

According to information from the Indian Cyber ​​Crime Coordination Centre, eight SMS headers were misused by these entities to send fraudulent communications to commit cyber crimes.

Upon further analysis of these PEs, 73 SMS headers and 1,522 SMS content templates owned by them were blacklisted. This ensures that neither principal entities, SMS headers nor templates can now be used to send SMS through any telco.

The DoT has taken this decisive action through the Sanchar Saathi initiative. In addition, citizens are asked to report suspected fraudulent communications to the center Installation of Chakshu on Sanchar Saathi to help the Transport Department prevent misuse of telecom resources for cybercrime and financial fraud.

The DoT notice on SMS/telemarketing calls is as follows:

• Prohibition of mobile numbers for telemarketing: The use of mobile numbers for telemarketing activities is not permitted. 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.
• Telemarketing Caller Identification: Telemarketing calls can be identified by their prefixes: 180, 140 and 10-digit numbers are not allowed for telemarketing.
• Report spam: To report spam, dial 1909 or use the DND (Do Not Disturb) service.