Number of Fake Call Centres Jumps from 35 to 65: MoS Devusinh Chauhan in Parliament – News18

Devusinh Chauhan, Minister of State for Communications, in response to queries posed throughout the winter session of Parliament, make clear the rise of faux name centres perpetrating fraudulent actions.

Over the previous three years, a staggering variety of unlawful telecom setups — 35 in FY 2021-22, 62 in FY 2022-23, and 65 in FY 2023-24 — have been unearthed, with reviews of people being defrauded via these channels.

The minister stated: “Such illegal setups are used to bypass the International Long Distance Operators (ILDOs) for anti-national activities, cybercrimes and financial frauds etc.”

According to him, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), in collaboration with Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) and Telecom Service Providers (TSPs), has been actively combating these illicit operations. Measures undertaken embody directives to ILDOs to dam incoming worldwide calls with suspicious or improper Caller Line Identification (CLI). Additionally, DoT has taken steps to dam purposes facilitating the origination of spoofed calls, stopping their availability on well-liked app shops.

DoT’s efforts prolong to citizen engagement via the Sanchar Saathi portal, enabling the reporting of worldwide calls with deceptive Indian CLI and the verification of cell connections to establish unauthorised subscriptions. Over 13 lakh such connections have been disconnected following this initiative.

Chauhan said that by utilising superior expertise like Artificial Intelligence and Facial Recognition, DoT has recognized and disconnected roughly 55.52 lakh suspicious cell connections, taking motion towards greater than 70,000 factors of sale (SIM brokers) concerned in promoting these illicit connections.

MISUSE OF HEADERS AND MESSAGE TEMPLATES

Furthermore, the minister addressed issues relating to the misuse of headers and message templates by sure telemarketers. The DoT’s proactive method concerned an AI/ML evaluation focusing on entities sending SMS via Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platforms.

This evaluation led to the elimination of hundreds of Principle Entities (PEs), SMS headers, and content material templates—over 20,000 PEs, 30,000 SMS headers, and 1.95 lakh SMS content material templates.

TRAI reported over 28,000 situations of header and content material template misuse, prompting motion from cell firms to blacklist entities concerned. The minister stated: “Since 2019, more than 20 Telemarketers, around 500 PEs, more than 3000 SMS Headers, and more than 40000 Content Templates have been blacklisted for sending phishing SMS/Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC).”

To counter this, TRAI directed cell firms to re-verify all headers and content material templates on DLT platforms, subsequently deactivating unverified ones. Stringent measures have been imposed to make sure compliance with laws, quickly deactivating quite a few headers and content material templates that didn’t meet the mandated standards.

Chauhan stated: “The Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR 2018) mandates that Mobile companies must ensure that all commercial communications on their network only take place using registered Headers and Content templates registered by the senders on the DLT platform. Principal Entities (PEs) can send their commercial communications by engaging Registered Telemarketers (RTMs) or directly through the ecosystem developed and established by the Mobile companies.”

“Further, to prevent the transmission of promotional messages through unregistered telemarketers or telemarketers using 10-digit telephone numbers, TRAI issued a direction on February 16, 2023. In compliance with TRAI’s direction, around 4 Lakh Headers and more than 11 Lakh Content Templates have been temporarily deactivated by the Mobile companies,” the minister famous.