New Delhi: As digital arrest scams rise in the country, the government has blocked more than 6.69 lakhs SIM cards and 1,32,000 International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers, as reported by police authorities.
The central government has taken several steps to strengthen the mechanism for dealing with cyber crimes, including digital arrest, in a comprehensive and coordinated manner, Minister of State for Home Affairs Bandi Sanjay Kumar said in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has set up the ‘Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre’ (I4C) to deal with all types of cybercrimes in the country in a coordinated and comprehensive manner.
The ‘Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System’ under I4C was launched in 2021 for immediate reporting of financial frauds and to stop siphoning off funds by the fraudsters.
The minister informed that more than Rs 3,431 crore has been saved in more than 9.94 lakh complaints so far.
The minister further stated that the government and telecom service providers (TSPs) have also devised a system to identify and block incoming international spoofed calls displaying Indian mobile numbers that appear to be originating within India.
“Such international spoofed calls have been made by cyber-criminals in recent cases of fake digital arrests, FedEx scams, impersonation as government and police officials, etc,” Kumar added.
Directions have also been issued to the TSPs for blocking such incoming international spoofed calls.
A Cyber Fraud Mitigation Centre (CFMC) has been established at I4C where representatives of major banks, financial intermediaries, payment aggregators, TSPs, IT Intermediaries and representatives of states/UTs law enforcement agency are working together for immediate action and seamless cooperation to tackle cybercrime.
A suspect registry of identifiers of cyber criminals has also been launched by I4C in collaboration with banks and financial institutions.
The government has also introduced a new feature titled as ‘Report and Check Suspect’ that provides citizens a search option to search I4C’s repository of identifiers of cyber criminals through ‘Suspect Search’.
—IANS
