The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), along with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), has blacklisted eight Principal Entities (PEs) for sending more than 10,000 fraudulent messages in the past three months.
According to information from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, these entities have misused eight SMS Headers to send fraudulent communications to commit cybercrime.
Following further analysis of these PEs, 73 SMS Headers and 1,522 SMS content templates owned by them have been blacklisted. This ensures that neither Principal Entities, SMS Headers, nor templates can now be used to send SMS through any telecom operator.
The DoT has taken this decisive action through the Sanchar Saathi initiative. Additionally, citizens are requested to report suspected fraudulent communications at the Chakshu facility on Sanchar Saathi to help the DoT prevent the misuse of telecom resources for cyber-crime and financial fraud.
DoT’s Advisory on Telemarketing SMSs/Calls are as follows:
- Prohibition of Mobile Numbers for Telemarketing: It is not permitted to use mobile numbers for telemarketing activities. If a consumer uses their telephone connection to send promotional messages, their connection will be liable for disconnection on the first complaint, and their name and address may be blacklisted for a period of two years.
- Identifying Telemarketing Calls: Telemarketing calls can be identified by their prefixes: 180, 140, and 10-digit numbers are not permitted for telemarketing.
- Reporting Spam: To report spam, dial 1909 or use the DND (Do Not Disturb) service.