War on spam: Govt, telecom industry need to adopt a zero-tolerance approach

Without wasting any more time, the DPDP Act needs to be acted upon with the goal of protecting users' data and thereby minimising fraud

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), the sector regulator, and the telecom industry have initiated action to curb spam calls and messages on mobile phones, but these are early days to gauge the impact of such steps. While a start has been made by Trai through mandatory whitelisting or registering uniform resource locators (URLs) and over-the-top (OTT) links sent through commercial text messages to reduce potential fraud, the need of the hour is a 360-degree war on spam.

Spam has many sides to it. By their very nature, spam calls and messages are unsolicited and a cause for considerable disruption and stress for mobile phone users. But an even bigger problem is that of financial fraud as a result of spam messages containing malicious URLs and other links that serve as phishing tools for hackers. There have been many recent examples of mobile users falling prey to such fraud attempts and experiencing financial loss after clicking on the links where senders pose as banks, insurance companies, e-commerce firms or any other legitimate commercial entity.

Among telcos, Bharti Airtel has taken the lead in red-flagging spam calls and SMSes through an internal artificial intelligence-based system. In a way, it has replaced the need for a service like Truecaller, which identifies spam calls. Other service providers must also come up with similar solutions. However, the Trai initiative on whitelisting of links that are typically sent through commercial messages will go a long way in preventing financial frauds. This is meant to weed out the malicious links that could cause harm to a user.

As has been reported, the process of whitelisting links in a constantly evolving scenario is challenging. Most large banks and insurance companies have been able to register for whitelisting, but there are still thousands of commercial entities waiting to go through the process. This will take time and patience. The regulator and the industry should keep working together to stop the malice in the system. In addition, users must stay alert and learn to detect signs of potential fraud in commercial messages. The government, the regulator, and the industry could devise a comprehensive plan for consumer education.

The government can play a significant role in this war on scam. First, there should be zero tolerance when commercial entities or individuals are found sharing mobile numbers of people without their permission. This is seen as the root cause of spam calls and messages skyrocketing in recent times. To give this a legal backing, the government should hasten bringing the rules for the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act. Meant to regulate the processing of digital personal data, the DPDP Act was passed in Parliament last year but is yet to come into force. Without wasting any more time, the DPDP Act needs to be brought with the goal of protecting users’ data and thereby minimising fraud.

In the past, Trai has come up with regulations to curb unsolicited calls and messages but they have largely remained ineffective. Besides technology coming to the aid of the unregistered telemarketing entities in spamming consumers, telecom operators have often been found taking a soft approach in dealing with the issue. The latest whitelisting step by Trai should not fall short of what it promises.