News India Live, Digital Desk: Government Announcement: As a major step towards cyber fraud and financial crime, the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) has announced to share “Financial Fraud Risk Indicators (FRI)” with stakeholders. It is a risk-based metric that classifies a mobile number associated with a medium, high or very high risk of financial fraud.
With this equipment Cyber security and verification investigation will increase in case of marked mobile numbers, when it is proposed to make digital payments on such numbers. Multidimensional analytical equipment developed as part of the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) empowers financial institutions with advance actionable intelligence information for prevention of cyber fraud.
This classification is the result of input from various stakeholders, including the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP) of the Cyber Crime Coordination Center of India (i4C), Chakshu platform of the Department of Telecommunications and intelligence information shared by banks and financial institutions. It empowers stakeholders-especially banks, NBFC and UPI service providers to prioritize enforcement and take additional customer safety measures in high risk of mobile numbers.
The Department of Digital Intelligence Unit (DIU) of the Department of Telecommunications regularly shares the list of mobile numbers with stakeholders who were disconnected (mobile number cancellation list – MNRL) as well as due to disconnects such as joining cyber crime, failure to re -verification, using more than the prescribed limit. These numbers are also commonly used for financial fraud.
Since the life of a mobile number misused in cyber fraud is usually a few days, and complete verification may take several days, so advance indicators about the risk associated with such numbers are very useful.
As soon as a suspected mobile number is marked by a stakeholder, it is multidayed analysis, and is classified at a moderate, high or very high financial risk. It then immediately shares this assessment about the number with all stakeholders through DIP.
Leading UPI Platform – PhonePe, Paytm and Googlepe, who are collectively responsible for more than 90% of UPI transactions, have started integrating DIP alerts in their system.
UPI is the most liked payment method in India, so this intervention can save millions of citizens from being a victim of cyber fraud. The Ministry of Communications has stated that FRI allows quick, targeted and collaborative action against suspected fraud in both telecommunications and financial sectors.
