India’s telecom companies are set to snap lakhs of mobile connections in coming weeks after alerts from the government and law enforcement agencies. These mobile connections are suspected to have been misused for cybercrime and obtained through forged documents.
Investigations revealed that a single handset was used for as many as 4,000 connections, triggering fears that it may have been used for cybercrime and financial fraud.
On May 9, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) directed telcos to disconnect 28,220 mobile handsets and re-verify over 2 million mobile connections that were apparently misused.
But how did this happen in the first place? What triggered the probe? What laws were flouted?
What is the modus operandi that has been exposed?
Fraudsters, typically, use SIM cards (read: mobile connections) of different telecom circles and regularly change the combination of SIM and handset to duck the radar of law enforcement agencies as well as telcos.
For instance, an Odisha or Assam circle SIM could be used in Delhi NCR. Officials say to avoid the radar, fraudsters, typically, make only a few outgoing calls and then change the SIM as too many outgoing calls from the same number would raise eyebrows and lead to imminent detection by telco monitoring systems. Once a rogue handset/number was tracked down, a thorough probe transpired, unravelling the entire modus operandi.
What does the crackdown comprise of?
The DoT, the home ministry and state police forces teamed up to stop abuse of telecom resources for committing cybercrime and financial fraud. Their objective: to dismantle networks of fraudsters and protect citizens from digital threats.
A recent analysis carried out by the MHA and police revealed that 28,200 mobile handsets were abused for cybercrime. The DoT also learnt that a staggering 2 million numbers were used with these mobile handsets.
Subsequently, the department asked telcos to undertake pan-India blocking of the 28,200 rogue handsets and carry out immediate reverification of 2 million mobile connections linked to these handsets, and promptly disconnect those failing the re-verification test.
Typically, only around 10% mobile connections pass the re-verification and the rest get disconnected.
In another instance, DoT asked telcos to reverify around 6.8 lakh mobile connections suspected to have been taken through forged documents. It suspects these numbers were obtained using invalid, non-existent, or fake/forged KYC documents.
What triggered the crackdown?
There is no specific trigger. But for many months, the government has been proactively screening mobile connections to prevent potential scams. The DoT now uses artificial intelligence (AI) analysis through various modules like Sanchar Saathi, Chakshu amongst others to clamp down on fraudulent connections.
While the DoT keeps tabs on fraudulent connections, consumers can also report numbers to it. In the last one year, 17 million mobile connections have been disconnected. 186,000 handsets have been blocked for involvement in cybercrime.
A few months ago, the government had also launched a Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) for coordination among stakeholders to curb misuse of telecom resources in cybercrime and financial fraud. The DIP is a secure and integrated platform for real-time intelligence sharing, information exchange and coordination among stakeholders including telcos, law enforcement agencies, banks and financial institutions (FIs), social media platforms and identity document issuing authorities. DIP is now accessible to over 650 stakeholders.
What laws were violated?
Government officials involved in the probe say the misuse of mobile connections for cybercrime/financial fraud is a clear violation of Indian Telegraph Rules, 1951. As per these rules, a subscriber shall be personally responsible for using his/her telephone.
No telephone shall be used to disturb or irritate any person for transmission of any message or communication which is of an indecent or obscene nature, or is calculated to annoy any person, or to disrupt maintenance of public order, or in any other manner, contrary, to any provision of law.
What are the available deterrents/remedies?
Telcos have been mandated to install fraud management and prevention systems in their networks and report any suspect subscribers to the government. As part of the terms of their Unified License, call detail records (CDRs) for outgoing calls made by customers need to be analysed, especially in cases where subscribers make innumerable outgoing calls day and night to various telephone numbers.
“The service provider should devise appropriate fraud management and prevention programmes and fix threshold levels of average per-day usage in minutes of the telephone connection; all telephone connections crossing the threshold of usage should be checked for bona fide use,” specifies a key clause in the Unified License agreement
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