DoT takes action on over 10K fraudulent messages sent using 8 SMS headers

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), which comes under the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, on Monday said that it took action on more than 10,000 fraudulent messages that were sent using eight SMS headers in the last three months.

DoT, in partnership with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), has taken decisive action to protect citizens from potential SMS fraud through the Sanchar Saathi initiative.

SMS header is also known as sender ID, and this can be of three types -- alpha, numeric, and shortcode.

Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), MHA, provided information about the misuse of eight SMS Headers to DoT for sending fraudulent communications for committing cybercrime.

DoT then took action and blacklisted the 'Principal Entities' which were owners of these eight SMS Headers.

All the 73 SMS Headers and 1,522 SMS content templates owned by these Principal Entities were also blacklisted by the department.

"None of these Principal Entities, SMS Headers or templates can now be used to send SMS through any telecom operator," DoT said.

In addition, the DoT has prevented further potential victimisation of citizens by blacklisting these entities.

Citizens can report suspected fraud communications at the Chakshu facility on Sanchar Saathi to help DoT in the prevention of misuse of telecom resources for cybercrime and financial fraud.

Earlier this month, the DoT issued directions to telecom service providers (TSPs) to block 28,200 mobile handsets and for re-verification of associated 20 lakh mobile connections.