Following information provided by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has taken decisive action against the misuse of eight SMS headers for cybercrime. It was found that over 10,000 fraudulent messages containing these headers were sent in the last three months.
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Action against SMS fraud
As part of the crackdown, the main entities responsible for these headers have been blacklisted, along with all 73 SMS headers and 1,522 SMS content templates associated with them. This effectively prevents these entities from using a telecom operator to send SMS messages.
“None of these key entities, SMS headers or templates can now be used to send SMS messages via any telecom operator,” says the Ministry said.
Collaboration with MHA
This proactive step to protect citizens from SMS fraud has been taken by the DoT in collaboration with the MHA through the Sanchar Saathi initiative, the Ministry of Communications (MoC) said on Monday.
The DOT has prevented further victimization of citizens by preventing these entities from exploiting telecom resources for criminal activities. Citizens can report suspected fraudulent communications at the Chakshu facility on Sanchar Saathi to assist the DOT in preventing misuse of telecom resources for cybercrime and financial fraud. MoC said.
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Regulating telemarketing practices
Moreover, strict measures have been taken to regulate telemarketing SMS/calls, according to the official release. Mobile numbers used for telemarketing activities may be disconnected on the first complaint, and prefixes such as 180, 140 and 10-digit numbers are prohibited for telemarketing purposes. Citizens can also report spam by calling 1909 or using the DND (Do Not Disturb) service.
