Govt: Telcos must verify SIM dealers, no bulk sales

According to a statement by the Ministry of Communications, the verification process will include a “written agreement” between the dealer and telecom operator. Currently, telecom operators are not required to maintain detailed documentation of dealers who sell their SIM cards.

In case of any illegal activity, the dealership will be terminated and blacklisted for three years. The process of verification should be done within a year, the ministry said.

Vaishnaw assured a “significant decrease” in number of cyber fraud incidents within a year.

The measures come as Indians have been found to be vulnerable to various threat actors in the cyber space, and amid an increase in cases of online scams. As many as 14,007 cyber fraud cases were registered in India in 2021, as per information shared with Parliament last month.

Probe agencies had found that a nexus helmed by 67,000 SIM dealers was handing out bulk connections to individuals without verifying their documents.

Vaishnaw said that since the launch of Sanchar Saathi portal, the government has disconnected 52 lakh cellphone connections that were obtained using forged documents. These connections, he said, were then used to carry out online scams by putting them in devices known as SIM boxes, through which one can make automated calls. Since May 2023, the government has filed 300 FIRs against fraudulent dealers.

Vaishnaw said the DoT has also discontinued the provision of bulk connections, to be replaced by a new procedure for business connections. “Besides, KYC of businesses, KYC of persons taking the handover of SIM will also be done,” Vaishnaw said.

Businesses can take any number of mobile connections, subject to complete KYC of all of its end-users. SIM cards will be activated only after successful KYC of end-users and physical verification of the business’s address.

Vaishnaw said that 66,000 WhatsApp accounts have been blocked following incidents of mass spamming; 8 lakh payment wallet accounts which were being used for fraudulent transactions have also been blocked.

With the help of Sanchar Saathi portal, 3 lakh handsets have been found and returned to their respective owners, he said.

The DoT has also developed an Artificial Intelligence-based facial recognition tool that can reportedly run checks on subscriber databases of telecom operators to deduce whether it contains multiple connections associated with the same person.

The tool, called Artificial Intelligence & Facial Recognition powered Solution for Telecom SIM Subscriber Verification (ASTR), is being used to weed out subscribers who have obtained several SIM cards using the same government ID. The DoT also shares a list of such numbers with banks, payment wallets and social media platforms for disengaging these numbers from platforms.