With frauds through fake job offers and account impersonations on the rise, the department of telecommunications (DoT), along with the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY), and banks have started taking action to curb the menace on social media and search engines.
As per the current process, banks perform web sweeping through softwares to detect the pattern involving promotional posts on social media and any fake call centre number associated with the bank on social media. Post that, the banks share fake numbers with DoT and promotional links with MeitY.
Based on the inputs from financial institutions, DoT blocks such numbers after verification. Similarly, MeitY through social media platforms blocks the URLs of social media groups in which such fake offers are posted, officials aware of the matter said.
Recently there has been an increase in fake call centre numbers on social media platforms as well as Google search, which dupe people. There has also been an increase in fake job offers on social media platforms and WhatsApp.
“The government started the process with banks three months back to curb such fake promotional offers. While banks give us certain suspicious numbers involved in fake offers, we then run our technology such as ASTR (AI and facial recognition for telecom SIM subscriber verification) to detect how many numbers are associated with a single ID,” a government official said, adding that in last three months they have blocked over 70,000 fake numbers.
Similarly, the government is also in talks with platforms like Meta and WhatsApp to tackle the issue of impersonation, another official said, adding that the companies are soon expected to come up with certain solutions.
Impersonation means someone pretending to be another person in order to commit fraud. These kind of activities are also being pursued actively by fraudsters.
According to a survey by community social media platform LocalCircles, around 39% of families claimed to have experienced financial fraud in the last three years. Based on the survey of 33,000 families, 23% said they experienced credit or debit card fraud while 13% were defrauded while buying, selling products online, and classified sites.
In addition, financial services and real estate sectors also top the list of sending unwanted calls to people. According to LocalCircles, 78% of the 15,186 subscribers complained of getting calls for financial services and real estate sales.
According to a recent report by PWC, more than half of all fraud incidents in India were platform frauds, meaning they were associated with online platforms like social media, e-commerce, enterprise, and fintech platforms.
“Someone I know got scammed and lost money. It started with a response to a part-time job offer on WhatsApp. The first few tasks were about leaving fake reviews for resorts and restaurants in random places like Peru,” Nithin Kamath, co-founder and CEO of Zerodha tweeted recently.
Not only users, but many companies have been losing money due to online frauds, experts said, adding that platforms like Telegram are also being used to channel frauds.
Lately, WhatsApp has also been under scanner from both DoT and MeitY amid an increase in spam calls and messages from international numbers.