DoT take down over 1000 SMS content templates to protect citizens from potential fraud

In a bid to stop the menace of spam calls by telemarketing companies, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has taken action against 73 SMS headers and 1,522 SMS content templates by blacklisting them to protect citizens from potential SMS fraud, reported ToI.

With assistance from Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), DoT was able to complete the crackdown through the Sanchar Saathi initiative.

The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) provided information about the misuse of eight SMS Headers for sending fraudulent communications for committing cybercrime, the government said.


The DoT has taken down more than 10,000 fraudulent messages that were sent using eight headers in the past three months. These SMS Headers belonged to 8 different Principal Entities (PEs). All the 8 PEs along with the 73 SMS Headers and 1522 SMS content templates owned by them have been blacklisted.

As a result of DoT's steps, none of these Principal Entities, SMS Headers or templates can now be used to send SMS through any telecom operator.

Reason for taking do
“Citizens can report suspected fraud communications at the Chakshu facility on Sanchar Saathi to help DoT in the prevention of misuse of telecom resources for cybercrime and financial frauds,” it added.

The government does not permit use of mobile numbers for telemarketing activities. If a consumer uses their telephone connection to send promotional messages, their connection will be liable for disconnection on the first complaint, and their name and address may be blacklisted for a period of two years.

Telemarketing calls can be identified by their prefixes: 180, 140, and 10-digit numbers are not permitted for telemarketing. Users can dial 1909 or use the DND (Do Not Disturb) service to report spam.