India curbs telecom fraud with tools and enforcement

July 30, 2025

The Minister for Communications in India announced impressive results in their efforts to reduce telecom fraud and caller ID spoofing. Let’s look at the results they achieved and the methods used.

Results

The timeline for the before-and-after results varies, but the “before” numbers were taken from around October 2024 to January 2025, while the “after” numbers were taken around June 2025.

Item	Before	After	Change
Daily spoofed calls	13,500,000	300,000	↓ 97.8%
Monthly international fraud complaints	2,776	9	↓ 99.7%

Tools

Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia described a variety of tools and methods used to help achieve these results.

Tool	Purpose
Sanchar Saathi	A portal used to report fraudulent calls
CEIR	A portal used to register, trace, and secure lost/stolen phones
ASTR	Software that uses demographic and know-your-customer details to identify suspicious accounts
CIOR	A system that identifies potentially spoofed calls originating outside of India with Indian calling numbers
DIP	A secure network platform used by watchdog organizations and service providers to coordinate investigation efforts

Enforcement

Perhaps the most remarkable part of this story is the vigorous enforcement efforts taken by government officials and law enforcement. It seems they were given legal authority to take decisive action to shut down illegal calls. Here are a few examples.

Enforcement Action	Numbers
Citizens reporting fraud	155 million
Phone numbers canceled for exceeding call limits	17.5 million
Mobile numbers analyzed by ASTR	1.34 billion
Mobile numbers disconnected after investigation	8.2 million
WhatsApp accounts suspended	2.4 million
Bulk SMS senders blacklisted	20,000
Lost/stolen mobile devices secured	3.5 million
Devices traced	2.1 million
Devices recovered and returned	507,000
Points of sale blacklisted	71,000
International carriers and aggregators blocked	308
First Information Reports filed with law enforcement	780

Our takeaways:

Technology is a great enabler to help solve problems, but it takes vigorous enforcement action to make a difference.
A multi-pronged approach can be effective.
The tools aren’t perfect. For example, one report raised concerns over the potential for false positives in the spoof detection tool.
Bad actors will adapt and develop new approaches to commit fraud.

More information

Governments anti-fraud initiative shows remarkable success, 97% reduction in spoofed calls. Some numbers are reported using Indian numbering conventions crore and lakh, which we converted in our recap.
Union Minister Jyotiraditya M. Scindia launches ‘International Incoming Spoofed Calls Prevention System’
Indian spoofed calls prevention system blocks 1.35 crore calls amidst false positives concerns

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