Tata Sky v/s Linkedin and RBI & Meity Summoned At Parliament
Introduction
In recent times the evolution of cyber laws has picked up momentum, primarily because of new and emerging technologies. However, just as with any other law, the same is also strengthened and substantiated by judicial precedents and judgements. Recently Delhi High Court has heard a matter between Tata Sky and Linkedin, where the court has asked them to present their Chief Grievance Officer details and SoP per the intermediary guidelines 2021.
Furthermore, in another news, officials from RBI and Meity have been summoned by the Parliamentary Standing Committee in order to address the rising issues of cyber securities and cybercrimes in India. This comes on the very first day of the monsoon session of the parliament this year. As we move towards the aspects of digital India, addressing these concerns are of utmost importance to safeguard the Indian Netizen.
The Issue
Tata Sky changed its name to Tata Play last year and has since then made its advent in the OTT sector as well. As the rebranding took place, the company was very cautious of anyone using the name Tata Sky in a bad light. Tata Play found that a lot of people on Linkedin had posted their work experience in Tata Sky for multiple years, as any new recruiter cannot verify the same. This poses a misappropriation of the brand’s name. This issue was reported to Linkedin multiple times by officials of Tata Play, but no significant action was seen. This led to an issue between the two brands; hence, a matter has been filed in front of the Hon’ble Delhi High Court to address the issue. The court has taken due cognisance of the issue, and hence in accordance with the Intermediary Guidelines 2021, the court has directed Linkedlin to provide the details of their Cheif Grievance Officer in the public domain and also to share the SoP for the redressal of issues and grievances. The guidelines made it mandatory for all intermediaries to set up a dedicated office in India and appoint a Chief Grievance Officer responsible for effective and efficient redressal of the platform-related offences and grievances within the stipulated period.
The job platform has also been ordered to share the SoPs and the various requirements and safety checks for users to create profiles over Linkedin. The policy of Linkedin is focused towards the users as well as the companies existing on the platform in order to create a synergy between the two.
RBI and Meity Official at Praliament
As we go deeper into cyberspace, especially after the pandemic, we have seen an exponential rise in cybercrimes. Based on statistics, 4 out of 10 people have been victims of cybercrimes in 2022-23, and it is estimated that 70% of the population has been subjected to direct or indirect cybercrime. As per the latest statistics, 85% of Indian children have been subjected to cyberbullying in some form or the other.
The government has taken note of the rising numbers of such crimes and threats, and hence the Parliamentary Committee has summoned the officials from RBI and the Ministery of Electronics and Information Technology to the parliament on July 20, 2023, i.e. the first day of monsoon session at the parliament. This comes at a very crucial time as the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill is to be tabled in the parliament this session and this marks the revamping of the legislation and regulations in the Indian cyberspace. As emerging technologies have started to surround us it is pertinent to create legal safeguards and practices to protect the Indian Netizen at large.
Conclusion
The legal crossroads between Tata Sky and Linkedin will go a long way in establishing the mandates under the Intermediary guidelines in the form of legal precedents. The compliance with the rule of law is the most crucial aspect of any democracy. Hence the separation of power between the Legislature, Judiciary and Execution has been fundamental in safeguarding basic and fundamental rights. Similarly, the RBI and Meity officials being summoned to the parliament shows the transparency in the system and defines the true spirit of democracy., which will contribute towards creating a safe and secured Indian Cyberspace.
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Introduction
The trajectory of India's digital economy is growing at an unprecedented rate, and so is India's cybercrime ecosystem. Parliamentary data tabled before the Rajya Sabha in May 2024 by the MHA suggests an overwhelming 900% growth in cybercrime complaints from 2021 to '25, while annual losses crossed 22,800 crore in 2024. The structural issues like the low victim restitution rate, the lack of forensic infrastructure, issues of jurisdiction related to offshore fraud factories targeting Indian citizens, and the huge disparity in awareness levels amongst India's youngest online citizens continue to exist. This brief brings out the clear trends in cybercrime, the role of institutional mechanisms in its prevention and response, failure points, and recommends appropriate policy interventions from the perspective of CyberPeace.
The Data Imperative
Since its operationalisation in 2019 by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), the NCRP serves as India's most significant institutional apparatus for cybercrime reporting and response. Data placed before the Rajya Sabha by the Ministry of Home Affairs on 30 July 2025 show that, with almost no exception, complaints of cybercrime have increased far more quickly than most traditional indicators of public safety. Between 2021 and June 2025, the NCRP received 6.59 million complaints, evidence of both a sustained and escalating expansion of India's cyber threat profile. Complaints per year more than quadrupled from 4.52 lakh in 2021 to 19.18 lakh in 2024 (324% over the period); by 2025, the NCRP had received 28.15 lakh complaints, a 523 percent rise compared with the 2021 baseline:

Clearly, cyber-enabled crime is no longer an occasional crisis but a systemic governance issue requiring consistent regulation and institution-building.
The financial fallout has also accelerated dramatically. Figures indicate that reported financial losses due to cybercrime jumped from 2,290 crore in 2022 to 22,812 crore in 2024 a 895% leap in two years:

Though response mechanisms such as the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS) successfully blocked or recovered close to 8,690 crore as of January 2026, victims appear to get back only about 2.18 percent of the losses they report.
In most areas, reporting and response have expanded greatly, but both the rate and scale of cyber-enabled financial fraud continue to outstrip India's remediation and law enforcement capacity.
Threat Typology of India’s Fraud Ecosystem
The nature of cyber crime in India has evolved from an opportunistic volume-based activity to a layered transnational criminal environment. I4C intelligence as tabled in Parliament reveals investment scams as the biggest threat: they accounted for 76% of the financial fraud lost in 2025 (although only 35% of complaints were filed, thus, a very high value per case was lost).

Digital arrest frauds, which tap on citizens' unawareness that "digital arrest" is not permissible under Indian law, rose from 39,925 cases (91 crore) in 2022 to 123,672 cases (1,935crore) in 2024.

The fast rise in the number of incidents as well as in the volume of fraud clearly points out that digital arrest fraud has moved away from the phase of novel scam typology to a formidable cyber-extortion landscape. The main orchestrators of investment, trading, dating, and digital arrest scams targeting Indian citizens were recently identified by the I4C CEO Rajesh Kumar as transnational criminal scam networks in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. Hence, this issue does not only fall within the domain of domestic law enforcement but constitutes a transnational cybercrime requiring parallel financial intelligence, diplomatic initiative, platform responsibility, and international investigative collaboration.

Geographic Concentration
Maharashtra and UP register the highest volumes in total complaints at 3.03 lakh and 3.01 lakh, owing to them being the financial capital and most populous state, respectively. Karnataka, Gujarat, Delhi, WB, Telangana, TN, Rajasthan, and Haryana register above 1 lakh complaints each. However, the critical information that is being missed is that while complaint rate growth is the fastest in Tier 2 and 3 geographies (Haryana leads per-capita complaint rate with 381/100k people in 2023; Telangana (261); Uttarakhand (243)), this signifies rural digital growth as a risk multiplier.

Institutional Architecture: Mechanisms and Performances
India's institutional response to cybercrime, led by the Ministry of Home Affairs' Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), is one of the world's largest real-time fraud detection and prevention ecosystems. The backbone of this is the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS), which has onboarded over 700 banks, payment service providers, e-commerce portals, digital wallets, and, since the Standard Operating Procedure was issued on 2nd January 2026, virtual asset service providers and crypto exchanges. This interconnected network allows for prompt freezing of funds and timely fraud intervention during the 'golden hour' of a cybercrime report.
Institutional capacity is robust, with approximately 8,690 crore saved via the CFCFRMS since its inception for over 24.65 lakh complaints. The national cybercrime helpline (1930) receives close to 10,000 calls daily, while the Suspect Registry has enabled the rejection of 9,519 crore via the detection of 23.05 lakh suspect entities and 27.37 lakh mule accounts. In parallel, the CyTrain platform has expanded training by registering 151,081 police and judicial officers and issuing 142,025 certificates. Cyberforensic labs in all 33 States and Union Territories have received central assistance totalling 132.93 crore, and data-driven interstate crime analytics and offender linkages through the Samanvaya and Pratibimb platforms have led to 21,857 arrests.
Ecosystem Gaps
Through I4C, CFCFRMS, CyTrain, and the establishment of forensic infrastructure in states, India’s cybercrime ecosystem has greatly grown. But due to the rapid proliferation of cybercrime, systemic shortcomings are revealed regarding the restoration of victims, investigation, forensic capacity, cross-border enforcement, awareness, and stakeholder coordination:
- Victim Restitution Deficit: Although the total of ₹ 8,690 crore frozen has increased, the refund for victim compensation is limited to only ₹ 167 crore (2.18%) due to lengthy restoration processes relying on court orders.
- Forensic Capacity Limitations: 2 national, state-level, unevenly equipped cyber forensic labs can’t match the needs of over 10 million cybercrime complaints per year.
- Low conviction rate: The investigations of cybercrimes suffer from evidence collection and criminal proceedings, leading to limited conviction rates.
- Cross-border enforcement challenges: Many of the investment and digital arrest scams, in fact, are originating from Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos, rendering the cybercrime response mechanisms of India helpless.
- Lack of Awareness: First-time digital users are quite prone to online scams and fraud, and many of the victims continue not reporting due to social stigma and lack of confidence.
- Partial Stakeholder Integration: Banks and small financial institutions, small companies, and emerging virtual asset providers not yet on board allow the money to slip through without being tracked.
CyberPeace Insights: Strategic Way Forward
India has already built a relatively mature response structure for cybercrime with I4C, CFCFRMS, and CyTrain and is coordinating the financial sector on it. The way ahead lies in outcome-oriented improvements and not just in the ability to report and intercept more. Here are the priority interventions that address the most important institutional shortcomings identified in the current ecosystem:
- Fast-track victim restoration: Introduce time-bound victim restoration mechanisms for low-value incidents through simplified processes and mandate national-level roll-out of successful Lok Adalat-based settlement mechanisms.
- District-level cyber forensics: Establish cyber forensic support units at the district level and enhance access to mobile, cloud, and blockchain forensic capabilities.
- AI-powered fraud prevention: Mandate deep-fake and voice-clone detection mechanisms across all financial institutions and telecom networks; embed predictive risk analytics into transaction screening frameworks.
- Cyber Suraksha Gram initiative: Increase digital fraud awareness across all common service centres, Jan Dhan enrollment schemes, and rural banking channels, and tackle the awareness asymmetry.
- Regional cybercrime coordination: Establish real-time, operational intelligence-sharing mechanisms with Southeast Asian economies, which have become home to large scam networks preying on Indian citizens.
- Specialised cyber prosecution ecosystem: Develop exclusive cyber courts, standardise digital evidence procedures, and broaden the scope of CyTrain to include the development of specialised cadres of investigators and prosecutors capable of handling increasingly complex cybercrime cases.
Conclusion
The 22,812 crore lost due to cybercrime in 2024 was more than a mere figure; it signifies a serious concern regarding citizen trust, economic security, and digital inclusion. Though India's institutional response to cybercrime is one of the largest, with an operational I4C and a CFCFRMS functioning in real time, the victim compensation and prosecution mechanism falls short. It's time for implementation: faster recovery of resources, increased enforcement, a larger scale of awareness, and finally, translating the institutional innovations into concrete justice for victims nationwide.
References
- https://sansad.in/getFile/annex/270/AU1341_tmaxdx.pdf?source=pqars
- https://www.mha.gov.in/MHA1/Par2017/pdfs/par2025-pdfs/LS02122025/452.pdf
- https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2244504®=3&lang=2
- https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documents/2025/oct/doc2025107659501.pdf
- https://www.medianama.com/2025/08/223-india-cybercrime-500-percent-increase-2021-2024/
- https://theprint.in/india/cybercrime-saw-24-spike-in-2025-indians-lost-rs-22495-crore-mainly-in-investment-scams/2859930/

Introduction
In a significant step, the Indian Army beefed up its information warfare capacity on June 25, 2026, with the operationalisation of @MythbusterXX, its dedicated fact-checking handle designed to counter any form of misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and deepfakes on the army swiftly. Adopting the motto 'Verify Before You Amplify,' the service seeks to pivot from reactive statements to active cognitive warfare. In a milieu where manipulated narratives can be as decisive in shaping public perception as kinetic force is on the battlefield, truth itself has transformed into a critical national security objective.
This is clear proof that protecting India’s digital battleground will from now on be defined not just by troop deployments but also by its institutional verification capacities, swift attribution mechanisms, and public awareness.
When the Battlefield Went Digital
Today warfare extends to timelines, group chats, and prime-time graphics packages. The distinction between misinformation , disinformation , and malinformation is crucial to operations. After all, they necessitate different types of counters. Generative AI just exponentially increased their velocity, cost, and the creepy believability of synthesized audio, video, and images. Operation Sindoor, India's May 2025 military response to a Pahalgam terror attack, provides a blueprint for just how large it can get.
According to the fact-checking site BOOM, 68% of fact checks in May related to Operation Sindoor, describing the campaign as a misinformation superspreader, and, more directly, India's Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan lamented at last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue that roughly 15% of his military’s operational time was spent on countering false news. New Delhi matched this response level; the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had blocked over 1,400 URLs, many bearing false information or communally inciteful narratives from accounts in Pakistan. These challenges won't be vanishing any time soon. Microsoft's July 2025 Digital Defence Report lists India among the top countries targeted for AI-powered state-backed hacking, noting the automation of attacks and generation of fake content used to influence opinion.
CyberPeace's regulatory tracking also indicates steps toward building infrastructure to mitigate this, a Rule 7 complaint system for deepfakes, and efforts to foster local detection capabilities under the IndiaAI mission signal it's now an infrastructural threat.
Why the Army Chose to Speak First
On 1 June 2026, the Indian government’s official fact-checking unit debunked a deepfake of former Army Chief General Dhiraj Seth talking about India’s engagement with the Taliban that emanated from Pakistan-affiliated propaganda sources, appearing within days of a change of military command. Barely days after General Dhiraj Seth was elevated to Chief of Army Staff, the 31st person to hold the post, another fabricated deepfake used spliced authentic footage with AI-cloned audio to falsely allege he had blamed the past army leadership for hiding the bodies of soldiers to protect their image.
Such a dual targeting of India’s army chiefs with deepfakes in such close succession is a testament as to why an authoritative, constantly running fact-check machine isn’t an optional extra but a strategic must-have.
Architecture is as important as architecture itself. India tried a statutory fact-checking model with a government-owned Fact Check Unit under the Information Technology (IT) Rules of 2023 through the Press Information Bureau (PIB). It had to retreat from the edge of the constitutional cliff. In September 2024, when the Bombay High Court struck down key provisions of these rules. It ruled it unconstitutional to empower the state to declare digital content relating to the state itself as fake, false, or misleading. A similar reading of the analysis by CyberPeace found that digital speech should be given the same protections as offline speech, and this should be the benchmark for any counter-misinformation policy.
MythbusterXX carefully avoids the constitutional controversy by acting as an institutional avenue that produces verified information and rebuttals in response to disinformation. There is a profound distinction between answering falsehoods with factual, credible speech versus shutting them down with state power, the very proportionality that civil libertarians have said must govern a democracy's approach to online misinformation.
Platforms as Accelerants, Not Just Conduits
Part of the issue lies upstream, with the algorithms and broadcasters that favor speedy falsehood over careful confirmation. A month’s supply of “false and misleading stories,” the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism observed, streamed online within hours of Operation Sindoor's onset: one fact-checker identified approximately seventy false claims by the close of day one. Meanwhile, on the small screen, graphics depicting escalating conflicts were being televised, with broadcasters forced to scramble under 24/7 competition.
Amplified manipulation of the crisis narrative is also a factor; studies show that thousands of accounts have been reposting exactly the same party content for three years, making crisis-induced viral narratives predictable rather than organic phenomena. For the most part, the platforms that manage these narratives and the algorithms that direct content on both sides of the divide are not just innocent delivery systems.
Digital Literacy as the First Line of Defence
Institutional rebuttals only go so far if citizens lack the reflex to pause before sharing, which is where CyberPeace's own work becomes directly relevant. Through a multi-year, Google.org-backed initiative, CyberPeace Foundation aims to reach over 40 million Indian internet users, including 9 million underserved beneficiaries, through a multilingual resource centre offering 650 hours of content, state-level helplines, and quick-response teams staffed by digital forensics and fact-checking experts. Longer-running efforts such as the Digital Shakti campaign and the annual eRaksha competition, run with NCERT, have built a culture of responsible digital citizenship among young and first-time internet users since 2019, while CyberPeace Corps, the foundation's volunteer arm, carries the same message into classrooms and campuses through cyber-awareness sessions run with universities and school networks nationwide. Notably, CyberPeace's own research on children's online safety had already flagged manipulated Army-related videos as a category of digital manipulation designed to cast doubt on official military positions, well before @MythbusterXX existed. The Army's tagline and CyberPeace's mission converge on the same insight: verification is a civic skill, not merely an institutional service.
A Season of Deepfakes
The history book of compromised defence material in the past year alone would be edifying. The International Federation of Journalists recorded one such deepfake widely circulated that relied on AI voice cloning and lip-sync tools to present the Pakistani PM conceding defeat, though the video actually contained his praise for the Pakistani air force’s performance following Operation Sindoor.
Other similar videos featured the Indian Prime Minister, External Affairs Minister, and Home Minister allegedly apologising to Pakistan and a deepfake with a foreign head of state in voice-cloned style applauding India’s armed forces. None needed a state’s resources, but just a laptop, voice cloning available readily, and a citizenry ready to spread rather than confirm the authenticity of any such sensational information before spreading it on to the masses.
Building the Verification Reflex
A resilient information ecosystem needs different actors playing complementary roles:
- Citizens: Do not equate virality with credibility. Verify all national security-related information through official sources, such as @MythbusterXX, before reposting or forwarding it.
- Journalists: Apply rigorous verification standards to live broadcasts, war-room graphics, and breaking reports, just as you would to print journalism, and avoid speculation during fast-moving military operations.
- Researchers and fact-checkers: Use open-source forensic and AI-detection technologies to authenticate questionable material. BOOM researchers, for instance, used Deepfake-o-meter to scrutinize misleading videos of political leaders before fact-checking and publishing them.
- Policymakers: Favored constitutionally proportional and carefully tailored regulations over broad-based takedown mandates. While the 2026 IT Amendment Rules require platforms to shift their obligations from compliance with takedowns towards preventive diligence on synthetic media, implementation should continue to be informed by judicial protections afforded to freedom of speech and due process.
Cyber Resilience Is National Security Now
Legal scholars examining Operation Sindoor have drawn a useful distinction between coordinated information warfare, which is strategic and intentional, and the diffuse, uncoordinated mis/disinformation that dominated timelines during the conflict, cautioning that disproportionate state responses to the latter can compromise citizens' right to know just as much as the falsehoods themselves. Getting that balance right, between speed and due process, between institutional voice and censorship, is the real test facing India's information ecosystem, in defence and far beyond it. CyberPeace has made a related argument in its own work on AI-enabled espionage: institutions such as the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre and the Defence Cyber Agency are already folding AI-based monitoring into their processes, yet no amount of institutional surveillance substitutes for a citizenry trained to spot manipulation on sight.
@MythbusterXX will not end deepfakes, and no single handle can. But it signals something CyberPeace has argued for years: resilience against synthetic and manipulated media requires authoritative institutional voices, digitally literate citizens, forensically equipped researchers, and proportionate policy, all pulling in the same direction. "Verify before you amplify" is not just an Army campaign. It is the operating discipline a democracy needs to protect its own information age.
Conclusion
@MythbusterXX can't possibly kill deepfakes and disinformation, but this marks a milestone shift towards developing an institutional resilience for India's info battlefield. For, after all, national security in the age of info warfare depends less on tech and more on robust institutions, constitutional balance in policymaking, responsible social platforms, and a citizenry that clicks "forward" only after clicking "verify."
* * * * *
This piece is part of CyberPeace's ongoing work on misinformation, disinformation, and digital citizenship in India. For more on CyberPeace's initiatives in digital literacy and cyber resilience, visit cyberpeace.org.
Key Sources
- Dynamite News, "Indian Army launches fact-check push against deepfake videos and fake military claims" (June 2026)
- ADG PI – Indian Army, official announcement on X (@adgpi)
- Press Information Bureau, Government of India, press release on countering misinformation during Operation Sindoor
- Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, "Truth is the casualty: How Indian fact-checkers debunked false claims during the India-Pakistan crisis"
- International Federation of Journalists, "AI, Deepfakes, and the Fog of War" and "Operation Sindoor and the Two Wars" (June 2025)
- Republic World, "Operation Sindoor Haunts Pakistan: Islamabad's Latest AI Deepfake Bid Against Indian Army Chief General Dhiraj Seth Exposed" (July 2026)
- TechPolicy Press, "Sanity Prevails as Bombay High Court Strikes Down India Government's Fact Check Unit", and LiveLaw, coverage of the tie-breaker verdict, on the IT Amendment Rules, 2023 (Fact-Check Unit)
- Dark Reading, "Indian Army Propaganda Spread by 1.4K AI-Powered Social Media Accounts"
- Inforrm, "(Dis)information warfare and the right to know: lessons from Operation Sindoor"
- CyberPeace Foundation, initiatives page and The CyberPeace Initiative (Google.org-backed digital literacy programme)
- CyberPeace Foundation, "AI-Powered Espionage: How India's Cybersecurity Strategy Must Evolve"
- CyberPeace Foundation, "From Deepfakes to Due Diligence – Decoding India's IT Amendment Rules"
- Wikipedia, CyberPeace Foundation (background on Digital Shakti and eRaksha)

Introduction
India’s telecom regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), has directed telcos to block all unverified headers and message templates within 30 and 60 days, respectively, according to a press release. The regulator observed that telemarketers were ‘misusing’ headers and message templates of registered parties and asked telcos to reverify all registered headers & message templates on the DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) platform. All telecom service providers (TSP) have to comply with these directions, issued under the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations, 2018, within a month, TRAI said in its release. The directions were issued after TRAI held a meeting with telcos on February 17, 2023, to discuss quality of service (QoS) improvements, review of QoS standards, QoS of 5G services and unsolicited commercial communications”, as per its press release.
Why it matters?
It may be useful as it can ensure that all promotional messages are sent through registered telemarketers using only approved templates. It is no secret that the spam problem has been difficult to rein in, so the measure can restrict its proliferation and filter out telemarketers resorting to misuse.
Details about TRAI’s orders
The release said that telcos have to ensure that temporary headers are deactivated immediately after the time duration for which such headers were created. The telcos also have to ensure that there is no space to insert unwanted content in the template of a message where one can add content to be sent to people. Message recipients should not be confused, so telcos must ensure that they register no lookalike headers in the names of different senders.
Measures to check unregistered telemarketers
The release ordered telcos to bar telemarketers not registered on its DLT platform from accessing message templates and scrubbing them to deliver spam messages to recipients on the telco’s network. The telcos have been directed not to allow promotional messages to be sent by unregistered telemarketers or telemarketers using 10-digit telephone numbers. It added that telcos have to take action against erring telemarketers and share details of these telemarketers with other telcos, which will then be responsible for stopping these entities from sending commercial communications through their networks.
How big is the problem of spam?
A survey conducted by LocalCircles said that two out of every three people (66 per cent) in India get three or more spam calls daily. It added that not one person among thousands of respondents checked the box of ‘no spam’.
The platform said that it was a national survey which gathered over 56,000 responses from Indians located in 342 districts. It also found that 92 % of responders said they continue receiving spam despite opting for DND. The DND list is a feature where mobile subscriber can register their number to avoid getting unsolicited commercial communication (UCC).
Addressing the problem of spam
The regulatory body recently released a consultation paper that proposed the idea of providing the real name identity of callers to people receiving calls. The paper said that it would use a database containing each subscriber’s correct name to implement the caller name presentation (CNAP) service. The regulator wants to use details acquired by telecom service providers via customer acquisition forms (CAF).
TRAI formed a joint committee to look at the issue of phishing and cyber fraud in 2022. It included officials from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The telecom watchdog had laid out a plan to combat SMS and call spam using blockchain technology (DLT). It saw telecom companies and TRAI to build an encrypted and distributed database that will record user consent to be included in SMS or call send-out lists.
According to a press release, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the telecom regulator in India, has ordered carriers to block any unverified headers and message templates within 30 and 60 days, respectively.
The regulator saw that telemarketers were “misusing” registered parties’ headers and message templates. Thus, they requested that telecoms validate all of the registered headers and message templates on the DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) platform.
According to TRAI’s statement, all telecom service providers (TSP) must adhere to these directives within one month under the 2018 Telecom Commercial Communication Consumer Preference Rules. The guidelines were released following a conference with telcos convened by TRAI on February 17, 2023, to discuss quality of service (QoS) enhancements, a review of QoS standards, the QoS of 5G services, and unsolicited commercial communications.
Why it matters?
Requiring that only registered telemarketers send promotional communications using approved templates may prove to be a beneficial safeguard. It is no secret that the spam problem has been challenging to control, so the measure can limit its spread and screen out telemarketers that employ abusive tactics.
Information on the TRAI order
According to the press release, telecoms must ensure that temporary headers are deactivated as soon as the time period they were established has passed. The telecoms must also ensure that there is no room in the message template where one can add content to be sent to recipients for unwanted content. There should be no room for uncertainty among message recipients. Thus, telecoms must ensure that no similar-looking headers are registered under the identities of various senders.
Taking action against unregistered telemarketers In accordance with the directive, telcos must prevent telemarketers who are not registered on their DLT platform from obtaining message templates and using them to send spam to subscribers on their network. Telemarketers who are not registered or who use 10-digit phone numbers cannot send promotional messages, according to instructions given to telecoms. Telcos must take action against misbehaving telemarketers, it was noted, and divulge their information to other telecoms, who would be in charge of preventing these companies from transmitting commercial messages.
How widespread is the spam issue?
According to a LocalCircles poll, three or more spam calls are received every day by two out of every three Indians (66%) on average. It further stated that not a single one of the thousands of responses clicked the “no-spam” box. According to the platform, the survey was conducted nationally and received over 56,000 responses from Indians in 342 districts. Moreover, 92 % of respondents reported that even after choosing DND, they still receive spam. A mobile subscriber can register their number on the DND list to prevent receiving unsolicited commercial communication (UCC).
consultation document recently in which it recommended the concept of providing the genuine name identify of callers to persons receiving calls. The paper indicated that it would employ a database containing each subscriber’s correct name to implement the caller name presentation (CNAP) service. The regulator wants to use information collected by telecom service providers through client acquisition forms (CAF).
Conclusion
TRAI established a joint committee to examine the problem of phishing and cyber scams in 2022. Officials from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) were present (SEBI).
The telecom watchdog had outlined a strategy for leveraging blockchain technology to combat SMS and call spam (DLT).