Centre runs national helpline to prevent cyber fraud

Reinforcing the commitment to provide a safe and secure digital payments eco-system, the Union Home Ministry has operationalised the national Helpline and Reporting Platform for preventing financial loss due to cyber fraud. The National Helpline and Reporting Platform provides a mechanism for persons cheated in cyber fraud to report such cases to prevent loss of their hard-earned money The Helpline 155260 and its Reporting Platform have been made operational by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs, with active support and cooperation from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), all major banks, Payment Banks, Wallets and Online Merchants. Also Read | No relief for common man as petrol and diesel prices in India hiked again The Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System has been developed in-house by I4C to integrate Law Enforcement Agencies and Banks and Financial Intermediaries. It is currently being utilized along with 155260 by seven States and Union Territories (Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh) covering more than 35 percent of the country’s population. Also Read | CBSE Class 12 result 2021 to be decided on basis of performance in Class 10, 11 & 12 The rollout in the others States for pan-national coverage is underway to prevent the flow of money siphoned off by fraudsters. Since, its soft launch, in a short span of two months, Helpline 155260 has been able to save more than Rs.1.85 crore of defrauded money from reaching the hands of fraudsters, with Delhi and Rajasthan saving Rs.58 lakh and Rs.53 lakh respectively.

The Helpline and its associated platform operate on the following workflow:

• Victims of cyber fraud call on Helpline no. 155260
• Police operator notes down the fraud transaction details and basic personal information and submits them in the form of a ticket.
• The Ticket gets escalated to the concerned Banks, Wallets, Merchants, and so on.
• An SMS is also sent to the victim with direction to submit complete details of the fraud on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (https://cybercrime.gov.in/) within 24 hours.
• The concerned Bank, then, checks the details in its internal systems.
• If the defrauded money is still available, the Bank puts it on hold, ie., the fraudster cannot withdraw the money.
• If the defrauded money has moved out to another Bank, the Ticket gets escalated to the next Bank to which the money has moved out. This process is repeated until the money is saved from reaching into the hands of the fraudsters.

Currently, the Helpline and its Reporting Platform have all the major public and private sector banks onboard. The notable ones include – State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Union Bank, IndusInd, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis, Yes and Kotak Mahindra Bank. It also has all major wallets and merchants such as PayTM, PhonePe, Mobikwik, Flipkart and Amazon linked to it. Click here to follow PTC News on Twitter -PTC News