Government Reveals Strategies to Combat Online Frauds in India - Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia speaks out on the efforts being made to deal with online scams in the country.
India Tackles Telecom Fraud and Cybercrime with Unified Digital Strategy
In an effort to combat the rising tide of cybercrime and financial fraud, the Indian government has rolled out a comprehensive digital strategy that utilizes several specialized platforms and systems.
At the heart of this strategy is the Intelligence Platform, a centralized system within the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) that integrates threat intelligence and data analytics to detect, prevent, and respond to cyber threats nationwide.
The Sanchar Saathi Portal is another key component, allowing mobile users to report and block fraudulent calls and SMS, thereby aiding in combating telecom-based frauds by enabling quick action against suspicious telecom connections.
The ASTRA (Anti-Social Technology and Rapid Action) App empowers citizens and authorities to report cybercrime incidents immediately, facilitating faster investigation and mitigation.
To address financial fraud, the government has introduced the CIOR (Cyber Incident Oversight and Response) System and the Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI). The CIOR System coordinates the response of banks, telecoms, and law enforcement agencies to quickly address cyber incidents, while the FRI is an analytical tool that assesses the risk levels of various financial transactions and detects fraud patterns early.
The DoT has also developed a unified Intelligence Platform to counter telecom fraud in real time, which aims to ensure complete transparency and seamless coordination. Through this platform, over 1.75 crore phones that are not a certain person's number have been blocked, and close to 1.36 crore phones that have exceeded the number of SIM numbers that they can have have been blocked.
In response to international spoof calls, which appear as Indian numbers despite originating abroad, the government has introduced the CIOR System to block such calls. As a result, around 1.35 crore international spoof calls per day have been blocked, and the number of such calls coming into India has reduced by 97%, down to just 3.3 lakh calls a day.
The DoT's ASTRA tool, an AI-driven system, has been instrumental in detecting and disconnecting fraudulent mobile connections, with 82 lakh numbers being disconnected based on it.
To combat the surge in cybercrime cases, the government is collaborating with financial institutions to monitor and freeze high-risk accounts through the FRI tool. Under the FRI system, individuals are tagged as high, very high, or medium risk based on their likelihood to commit financial fraud.
Last year, Indians lost approximately Rs 22,845 crore to digital criminals and fraudsters, which is nearly three times the amount lost in 2023 (Rs 7,465 crore). However, through these initiatives, close to five lakh stolen phones have been recovered and returned to their original owners.
The number of cybercrime complaints in India reached over 22 lakh in 2024, up from 15.9 lakh in 2023 and approximately three times the volume recorded in 2021. Despite this increase, the Indian government's multi-pronged digital strategy is proving effective in mitigating these threats and protecting its citizens.
[1] Source for the losses in 2024 [2] Source for the losses in 2023 [3] Source for the increase in cybercrime complaints [5] Source for the prediction of losses in 2025
Technology has been at the forefront of the Indian government's efforts to combat rising cybercrime and financial fraud, as seen in the implementation of the CIOR System in the general-news category to address financial fraud, and the ASTRA App under crime-and-justice for speedy cybercrime reporting. Additionally, the Sanchar Saathi Portal and the unified Intelligence Platform specialize in telecom-based fraud prevention.
