The Department of Telecommunications has identified and blacklisted between 300,000-400,000 SIM cards linked to fraudulent activities, according to government statistics.Launched in May, the Financial Risk Indicator (FRI) identifies approximately 2,000 high-risk telephone numbers daily, potentially involved in employment or investment scams. Additional suspicious SIMs are detected through AI pattern matching. This system has enabled UPI platforms such as Paytm, GPay and PhonePe to prevent substantial fraudulent transactions in recent weeks, according to a senior DoT official’s statement to ET.The Reserve Bank of India issued guidance in July to all banking institutions to incorporate the FRI into their systems. “As a result, time-to-action on fraud accounts has been reduced to a few hours,” the DoT official said. “This also signals increasing maturity of DoT’s Digital Intelligence Platform which was launched with the aim of real-time data exchange among stakeholders.”Financial institutions are implementing FRI-based preventive measures, including blocking suspicious transactions, sending customer alerts, and introducing delays for high-risk transactions.Major institutions including PhonePe, Punjab National Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Paytm and India Post Payments Bank are actively utilising the platform, as previously reported by the telecom department.MFilterIt, a digital fraud prevention organisation, has implemented AI systems on X, Instagram and Facebook to identify and interact with fraudulent accounts. A single AI programme identifies approximately 125 suspicious accounts daily. “These are investment scam fraudsters which may or may not be using mule accounts,” said Dhiraj Gupta, cofounder and chief technology officer at MFilterIt. “We are tracking social media for these fraudsters who post tall claims like ‘double your money in 6hrs’ and then our bot interacts with these people posing as genuine investors. This persuades the criminals to reveal their information like UPI ID or barcode,” he explained.Signzy’s senior product manager, Gaurav Gupta, also considers the FRI a crucial preventive measure against fraud.Despite Indians conducting over 200 billion digital payments last year, cybercrime has increased significantly. The government’s intelligence-based risk indicators assist financial institutions in preventing scams.The DoT’s Sanchar Saathi portal reported 3.58 million blocked mobile devices linked to cybercrime. The portal’s Chakshu feature allows users to report fraudulent communications via calls, SMS, or WhatsApp. The department utilises AI tools like ASTR to detect fraudulent SIM registrations.TRAI is testing a Digital Consent Acquisition system to manage spam communications and has established a specific 160-number series for commercial transactions.
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