Government advises citizens on calls impersonating DoT

Government on Friday issued an advisory against calls being made in the name of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) wherein recipients are being issued various threats. These callers are threatening people by saying that their mobile numbers will be disconnected or their mobile numbers are being misused in some illegal activities.

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The DoT has also issued advisory about WhatsApp calls from foreign origin mobile numbers (like +92-xxxxxxxxxx) impersonating government officials and duping people.

Earlier this month, the DoT launched ‘Chakshu’ facility on Sanchar Saathi portal under the DoT’s ‘Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP)’ for coordination among the stakeholders to curb misuse of telecom resources in cyber-crime and financial frauds.

“Cyber criminals through such calls try to threaten/ steal personal information to carry out cyber-crime/ financial frauds. The DoT does not authorise anyone to make such calls on its behalf and has advised people to stay vigilant and asked not to share any information on receiving such calls,” the DoT said on Friday.

It has advised citizens to report such fraud communications at ‘Chakshu-Report Suspected Fraud Communications’ facility and added that such proactive reporting helps DoT in prevention of misuse of telecom resources for cyber-crime, financial frauds and many such activities.

Further, citizens can check the mobile connections in their name at ‘Know Your Mobile Connections’ facility of Sanchar Saathi portal and report any mobile connection not taken by them or not required, it said.

The DoT has also advised citizens to report at cyber-crime helpline number 1930 in case of already a victim of cyber-crime or financial fraud.

Earlier this month, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Communications and IT had informed that the DoT has 35-lakh headers analysed and out of that 1.9 lakh headers have been disabled, which is one more level of unsolicited commercial communication (UCC or pesky calls) kind of cleansing.

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He had informed that across such platforms, frauds worth an estimated ₹1,008 crore have been prevented in the last nine months and ₹1,000 crore total money of Indian citizens have been saved.

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