International spoof calls: Centre gets cracking the whip, over 20 foreign carriers blocked

Indigenously-developed system to identify and block international spoofed calls that display Indian mobile numbers has significantly brought down such calls to about 4 lakh per day

New Delhi: An indigenously-developed system to identify and block international spoofed calls that display Indian mobile numbers has significantly brought down such calls to about 4 lakh per day, the government has informed.

Further, the government asked Indian Telcos to initiate drive against foreign carriers or aggregators who are handing over spoofed international calls, and they have blocked more than 20 such carriers to date.

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The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) recently launched an indigenously-developed International Incoming Spoofed Calls Prevention System, along with all telecom service providers (TSPs).

The tool proved to be a formidable barrier that blocked 90% of all the incoming international calls which were identified as spoofed calls — approximately 1.35 crore, in just 24 hours, indicating that the system’s success in tackling the issue of cyber-crimes using spoofed calls from abroad.

Fraudsters were earlier using international spoofed calls that displayed Indian mobile numbers (+91-xxxxx) to deceive Indian citizens and carrying out cyber-crimes and financial frauds.

Though these calls appear to originate from within India, they are actually made from abroad through manipulation of the Calling Line Identity (CLI), commonly referred to as phone number.

With the successful implementation of the system, scammers abroad changed their modus operandi and now they have started spoofing using international numbers.

To counter this, DoT has asked telecom service providers to display ‘International Calls’ on all calls coming from outside India.

This helps the citizen to understand that since the incoming call is an ‘International Call’, it cannot be from organisations like DoT, TRAI, police, RBI, customs, UIDAI etc.

One of the major service providers has already implemented this in its network and others are in the process of doing so, according to the Ministry of Communications.

In order to further tackle the menace of international spoofed calls from reaching Indian citizens, DoT has asked telecom service providers (TSPs) to block traffic from such international carriers, which are repeatedly sending spoofed CLI call traffic to India.

Providers like Airtel and BSNL have blocked more than 20 such carriers/aggregators who were handing over spoofed international calls.

“The recently launched Sanchar Saathi App has placed the convenience of reporting fraudulent calls at the fingertips of the citizens. It immensely enhances the ease of reporting any suspected fraud communications by allowing citizens to report such incidents directly from their mobile phone call logs,” said the DoT.