New Delhi: The Union Department of Telecommunication (DoT) has blocked more than 2 crore mobile connections that were being used for fraudulent activities and successfully reduced spoof calls by 97 per cent, according to DoT Secretary Dr. Neeraj Mittal on Wednesday.
Dr. Mittal was speaking during the annual West Zone Conference on security-related matters, which was organised by the DoT in South Goa. He addressed the gathering through a video link and shared key achievements in the telecom sector’s fight against cyber fraud. He credited the reduction in spoof calls to the government’s ‘Sanchar Saathi’ initiative, a platform launched to tackle misuse of telecom services.
Spoof calls are fake calls in which scammers disguise their identity by manipulating caller ID information to commit fraud or deceive people. Mittal said that alongside Sanchar Saathi, the department has developed a ‘Digital Intelligence Platform’ to crowdsource information related to frauds, particularly in the financial sector.
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This platform helps banks and other financial institutions share and access data about ongoing scams, making the digital ecosystem safer and more secure. Highlighting the growing importance of telecom, Mittal said that while the number of telecom users has increased rapidly, the misuse of telecom resources — especially in financial fraud — has also gone up.
To counter this, the DoT has launched multiple initiatives to strengthen cybersecurity infrastructure. He noted that artificial intelligence (AI) has played a key role in identifying and eliminating fraud. With the help of AI, 78 lakh fake mobile connections and 71,000 fraudulent retail points of sale have been disconnected so far.
The department is also expanding its network of telecom testing labs to ensure that high-quality and certified telecom equipment is used across the country. In another major move, the DoT has introduced a ‘Financial Fraud Risk Indicator’, developed in collaboration with its partners.
This tool helps detect mobile numbers involved in financial frauds more effectively. Mittal also announced that the DoT is working on upgrading the Centralised Monitoring System (CMS) to keep pace with modern cyber threats and improve real-time surveillance capabilities.
The department is actively collaborating with private players to boost sector-specific and application-level security, ensuring that the telecom infrastructure remains resilient and trustworthy. With these efforts, the DoT aims to build a safer and more reliable digital environment for millions of mobile users in India.
