The Indian government is proactively working to ensure that cybercrime or online fraud can be curbed within the country. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has banned several calling codes to keep Indian citizens safe. All international long-distance operators (ILDOs) have been instructed to drop incoming calls with no calling line identification (CLI) or improper CLI. Further, calls from numbers with certain prefixes have also been asked to drop.
In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Devusinh Chauhan, minister of state for communications said that the government unearthed 65 illegal setups during FY24 which allowed international calls with spoofed Indian numbers.\
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"Further, to prevent the incoming international calls with spoofed Indian landline numbers, DoT has directed the ILDO to drop international incoming calls with no CLI, improper CLI or having CLI prefixes such as +11, 011 & 11, +911 to +915," the minister said.
The telecom service providers have so far disconnected 13.08 lakh mobile connections which were found to be used for illegal activities. With the help of illegal telecom setups, the international numbers Internare enabled to bypass the ILDOs and then used to conduct anti-national activities and financial and cyber frauds.
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Starting December 1, 2023, DoT has also revised the regulations around selling SIMs within India. The goal is to make the process of selling SIMs more transparent and secure which will directly result in a reduction of cybercrime.
Indians owning Android devices can leverage the Truecaller application for caller identification. It helps in identifying whether the call you are receiving is coming from a genuine person or whether it is a fraud call. Further, you should remember never to share OTPs (one-time passwords) with anyone on call claiming to help you with any sort of transaction related to your bank or other personal things.
