Delhi cops, Truecaller to join hands in a bid to thwart cyberfraudsters

Truecaller — the popular caller identification and spam blocking mobile application — will partner with the Delhi polide department in a iniative to help the public identify verified numbers and protect themselves from cyberfraud and impersonation scams.

According to a PTI report, in addition to educating Delhi residents and holding a joint awareness campaign against cyberfraud, Truecaller will soon help display official numbers of the Delhi Police representatives on the app’s government directory services, police said.

”During the COVID pandemic, Truecaller had helped us a lot because there were a lot of scams and frauds reported then on the pretext of selling oxygen cylinders, concentrators, medicines and other essentials associated with treatment of the deadly virus. So, then our officials identified the number of those fraudsters and alerted Truecaller which displayed those unverified numbers as spam,” Suman Nalwa, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Public Relations Officer), told PTI.

The Delhi police will sign a memorandum of understanding with Truecaller, under which the app will verify official contact numbers of the Delhi Police in a bid to thwart fraudsters who try to pose as officials of the force and extort the public.

”This will help users identify verified numbers and protect them from frauds and scams relating to impersonation in the name of government officials. All verified numbers of Delhi Police will have a green badge and a blue tick mark,” Nalwa added.

Police said Truecaller will also mark the phone numbers against which complaints regarding harassment, scam or others have been registered.

“We are very excited about our partnership with the Delhi Police ... Our sophisticated Caller identification and Spam detection feature for calls and SMSes continue to play an important role in preventing people from frauds and scams. We stay committed to promoting safety in digital communications, especially for vulnerable sections like first-time internet users, women and senior citizens,” Pragya Misra, Director of Public Affairs, Truecaller, told CNBC-TV18.com.

Last year, Truecaller trained about 1.6 million Indians with the goal of making digital communication safe. This initiative is another step building on those efforts to empower many more netizens to protect themselves against harm and take advantage of the immense opportunities that the internet brings, she added.

Earlier this week, a 22-year-old Indian based in Italy was arrested for allegedly posing as the Vice President of India by creating a fake WhatsApp account using Jagdeep Dhankhar’s picture as his profile display to dupe people and seek favours from senior bureaucrats. The accused, Gagandeep Singh, who is living in Offanengo, Italy since 2007 with his family, got the idea of impersonation after watching several YouTube videos.

In another case, three men who posed as officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs and Crime Branch of Delhi Police were arrested for allegedly extorting Rs 1.8 crore from a retired commandant of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force by threatening to post an obscene video of him on social media platforms.

”As per the MoU, we will have to share our official contact numbers for inclusion in the government directory services feature. We will also need to alert Truecaller about the latest cybercrime threats and trends and share numbers on spam or scam on a regular basis,” she said.

Besides this, Truecaller will also help in generating awareness about cyber safety by conducting cyberwise training sessions with the assistance of Delhi Police. It will help educating the public about better ways to tackle cyberfraud.