In a bid to curb SMS scams, the government has blacklisted eight principal entities involved in sending more than 10,000 fraudulent messages in the past three months, according to a release by the department of telecommunications (DoT).
The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre under the ministry of home affairs provided information about the misuse of eight SMS Headers — alphanumeric strings assigned to principal entities to send commercial messages — for sending fraudulent communications for committing cybercrime.
Principal entities mean businesses such as banks and insurance companies that send commercial messages to subscribers.
“All the 8 PEs (principal entities) along with the 73 SMS Headers and 1,522 SMS content templates owned by them have been blacklisted,” the release said.
“None of these principal entities, SMS Headers or templates can now be used to send SMS through any telecom operator,” it added.
The DoT has prevented further potential victimisation of citizens by blacklisting these entities, and reiterated its commitment to safeguarding citizens against cybercrime.
“Citizens can report suspected fraud communications at Chakshu facility on Sanchar Saathi to help DoT in prevention of misuse of telecom resources for cybercrime and financial frauds,” the release said.
The government also warned that use of mobile numbers for telemarketing activities is not permitted.
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, DoT said.
At present, 10-digit numbers are not permitted for telemarketing. Telemarketing calls can be identified by their prefixes: 180, 140, the government said.