The Government of India has given instructions to telecom companies. The government has directed telecom operators – Reliance Jio, Airtel, Vodafone-Idea and BSNL – to block all incoming international fake calls displaying Indian mobile numbers. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said in an advisory that it has been reported that fraudsters are making international fake calls to Indian citizens by showing Indian mobile numbers and committing cyber crimes and financial fraud.
How do companies commit international call fraud
According to DoT, such calls come from within India, but are made by cyber criminals from abroad by manipulating the Calling Line Identification (CLI). Recently, international calls have been misused in cases of fake digital arrests, FedEx scams, drugs or narcotics in couriers. Common people have been duped by posing as government and police officials. Such international numbers have been asked to be blocked.
The Department of Telecommunications and Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) have put in place a system to identify such international fraudulent calls and block them from reaching any Indian telecom subscriber. Now, instructions have been issued to TSPs to block such incoming international fraudulent calls, the statement said.
What are Reliance Jio, Airtel and Vodafone-Idea doing to stop these scams as per the instructions of the Ministry of Telecommunications. Landline numbers of telecom operators are already being blocked as per the instructions issued by DoT.
Last week, the DoT had issued directions to telecom operators to immediately re-verify 6.8 lakh mobile numbers suspected to have been acquired using invalid, non-existent or fake documents within 60 days. 6.80 lakh mobile connections have been found to be potentially fraudulent.
