To counter cybercrime that has cheated lakhs of citizens of their hard-earned money via lure of high-yield investments, gaming fraud etc, the Department of Telecommunication has blocked 1.92 crore SIM cards all over India besides blocking 2.2 lakh mobiles with specific IMEI numbers.
As part of this action, 10,296 mobiles and 6.76 lakh SIM cards were blocked in Gujarat. Usually, cyber crooks dupe citizens by sending them malicious links.
India’s total telecom subscriber base stood at 119.7 crore as of February 2024.
The DoT first zeroed in on SIM cards bought fraudulently on documents of other persons, wholesale registration of SIM cards on one particular name and photo, multiple SIM cards issued to the same persons and those involved in criminal activity as notified by the central investigation agencies. Inputs were also given by state police, banks, as well as those that have been scanned through the Artificial Intelligence and Facial Recognition Powered Solution for Telecom SIM Subscriber Verification (ASTR) – on the supercomputer PARAM, housed at the Centre for Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in Pune.
The government also blocked SMS headers through which fraudulent messages from malicious cyber criminals were being sent. While 32,000 such SMS Headers have been blocked across India, the number stands at 573 in Gujarat. Of the 573 in Gujarat, 423 related to fake instant loan messages and 150 were related to gambling messages.