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The mobile telephone emerged first as a boon and then increasingly as a bane, with thousands of fraudsters trying to trap the unsuspecting common man to defraud them of their money, and it is to cleanse the system of these evil elements that the government has so far blocked 55.52 lakh mobile connections obtained through fake or forged documents were disconnected.

The number was placed in  Parliament on Wednesday, December 13, by minister of state for communications Devusinh Chauhan. This, he emphasised, was one of the tools to rein in cyber frauds. Over the past few years, cyber fraudsters have been increasingly putting the wealth of individuals and institutions in great peril.

Among the measures that the government took the most prominent was the Sanchar Saathi portal launched in May 2023. The objective was to make citizens aware about mobile connections issued in their names. The minister said that the regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is conducting mass consumer awareness campaigns to stop cyber frauds, including misuse of headers and message templates of principle entities (PEs).

“As on date, among outcomes of the Sanchar Saathi portal are that 55.52 lakh mobile connections taken on fake/forged documents were disconnected, 1.32 lakh mobile handsets were blocked for involvement in cyber crime/financial fraud and 13.42 lakh suspected mobile connections reported by citizens were disconnected failing re-verification,” the MoS said.

Chauhan said that fraudsters were becoming so desperate that there were instances when they were impersonating Trai officials to swindle gullible citizens.

To take the growing menace of cyber frauds head on, Trai has instructed telecom companies to expedite appropriate steps against mobile numbers that are used to bombard consumers with unwanted calls and text messages. Thus, the regulator wants to extend the protection of the common man from cyber frauds to harassment too.

Nowadays it has become commonplace for fraudsters to threaten citizens with disconnections with the eventual intention of fleecing them. Trai has issued public advisories alerting people not to entertain such calls that threaten disconnections. These calls could come from individuals and companies that regularly pose as officials of the regulator.

Trai has also warned that fake agencies and individuals were out to trick people into making Skype video calls to avoid disconnections.

The minister said that the Department of Telecommunications has carried out an analysis based on artificial intelligence or machine learning technology of entities shooting text messages through distributed ledger technology platforms. As an outcome of the exercise about 20,000 principal entities, 30,000 SMS headers and 195,000 text message content templates have been deleted.

Incidentally, Trai’s action against telemarketers, who often harassed ordinary people, when, in July 2018, it issued rules, making it mandatory for mobile carriers to seek subscriber consent before sending unsolicited commercial communications.