New Delhi: In a move to curb frauds using mobile phone sim cards, the government on Thursday said that bulk sales of sim cards will be barred and mandated registration of franchisee, agents and distributors or point of sales by telecom companies besides police verification for sim dealers.
Telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that bulk buying of sim cards has been completely done away with but connections or sims for businesses, corporates or events would be permitted. However, know-your-customer, or KYC norms, will be applicable to each of the individual sim owner.
“We hope that with these two reforms, cyber fraud and user protection will undergo a significant change,” he said. The department of telecommunications (DoT)will issue detailed guidelines for the same.
“Earlier, people used to buy (mobile) sim cards in bulk. There was a provision for this to buy sim cards in bulk. However, it has been decided to end this provision. Instead, we will bring a proper business connection provision which will help in stopping fraudulent calls,” the minister added.
Entities will be able to get any number of mobile connections subject to complete KYC of all of its end-users. Sim cards will be activated only after successful KYC of end users and physical verification of premise and address of the entity. In addition to thumb impression and iris-based authentication in Aadhaar E-KYC process, facial based biometric authentication is also permitted. Individuals can still take up to nine sims on basis of one identification.
Under the point-of-sale registration reform, the seller will enter into a written agreement with the telecom service provider or licensee and if the seller indulges in any illegal activity, its association with the telco will be terminated and blacklisted for three years. A penalty of ₹10 lakh will be imposed. The government has given 12 months for compliance where all existing sellers will be registered with the telcos. The move will help in identifying, blacklisting and eliminating rogue sellers from the carriers’ systems. Under the KYC reforms, for preventing misuse of Aadhaar, demographic details will mandatorily be captured by scanning QR code of printed Aadhaar of the individual taking new sims or applying for a fresh sim on an existing number.
In case of disconnection, the mobile number will be allocated to a new customer after 90 days. A subscriber has to undertake complete KYC for replacement of his SIM and there will be bar of 24 hours on outgoing and incoming SMS facilities.
The second set of reforms is in addition to those introduced in May 2023 that included the Sanchar Saathi portal for reporting stolen or lost mobile handsets and blocking them, and AI based software ASTR for identifying illegal mobile connections.
DoT has since been able to detect 6.6 million illegal mobile connections, disconnected 5.2 million connections, blacklisted 67,000 point of sales and blocked 17,000 mobile handsets.
More than 300 FIRs have been registered against more than 1,700 points of sales or sellers, while 66,000 WhatsApp accounts have been blocked. Also, 800,000 bank or wallet accounts used by fraudsters have been frozen as well. Out of about 1.8 million subscriber complaints about fraudulently registered mobile connections in their name, 926,000 complaints have been resolved. Out of 750,000 complaints about stolen or lost mobile handsets, 300,000 mobile handsets have been traced, the department said on Thursday.
Source By: livemint
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