'DoT's fraud indicator prevents ₹1,400 crore in potential losses'

The Department of Telecommunications' (DoT) Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI) has prevented potential financial losses of more than ₹1,400 crore since its launch in May 2025, Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

The risk-scoring system flags mobile phone numbers as medium, high or very high fraud probability, enabling banks, non-banking financial companies and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) providers to deploy real-time safeguards including alerts, transaction delays, warnings and declined transactions.

Scindia said that the FRI operates as a risk-based metric within the DoT's Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP), which connects more than 1,200 stakeholders, including police from 36 states and union territories, central agencies, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, payment operators and telecom service providers. Stakeholders share suspected fraud numbers through the platform, which DoT analyses for rapid action.


The minister added that the relevance of other fraud prevention techniques through the DIP system as well. The ASTR AI tool has identified suspicious connections, leading major telecom providers to disconnect more than 8.8 million numbers after reverification. The International Incoming Spoofed Calls Prevention System, operational since October 17, 2024, has slashed international spoofed calls mimicking Indian numbers by nearly 99%, blocking 13.5 million calls in a single day.