Telecos to warn customers about criminals posing as TRAI reps

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With fraudsters preying on the unsuspecting common man by posing as employees of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) and stealing their confidential data defraud them of their money, the regulator has directed telecom companies to caution subscribers, The Economic Times has said in a report.

Fraudsters are not only sending messages, but also telephoning random citizens and posing as Trai officials with the eventual intention of wresting sensitive personal data from him/her.

“Nowadays, in the name of Trai, many messages are being sent and the public are being defrauded. In order to create awareness and advise the public at large, we want to send an advisory and a cautionary message to all subscribers,” Trai secretary V Raghunandan told the newspaper.

According to the official the message will be sent from the header BT-TRAIND. “Trai never sends any message or makes any call for verification/disconnecting/reporting unlawful activities of mobile numbers. Beware of such messages/calls in the name of Trai. Any call or message claiming to be from Trai should be considered potentially fraudulent and may be reported to the national cybercrime reporting portal,” added Raghunandan.

The Trai official said that the telecom services providers will be dispatching such warnings to subscribers in the next 10 days.

Fraudsters offer different pretext for calling subscribers. Sometimes it is apparently for seeking no-objection certificates for tower installation or a verification of existing number to avoid disconnection. At other times, fraudsters also say that there are complaints against a phone number for circulating offensive messages and there have been police complaints against them. Then they transfer the line to another accomplice who would pose as a police officer and proceed to inject fear into the mind of the target so that he shares his personal, financially sensitive information.

The number of such messages has risen many times recently. There are around 115 crore cellphone subscribers in the country. Of them, about 45 crore are with Jio, 38 crore are with Airtel and 22 crore with Vodafone. Apart from these private telecom operators, state-owned BSNL has 9.5 crore subscribers. They could be receiving their cautionary messages on their phones starting January 1.