There is a renewed effort underway in the fight against spam and unsolicited commercial communication as the Department of Telecom (DoT), the telecom regulator Trai, and private telecommunication companies are launching new programs to combat cyber fraud and phishing attacks that are on the rise. 

Several regulatory agencies have been working hard to crack down on spammers and block the numbers of individuals who are engaging in fraudulent activities as detected by Trai and the DoT. It has been reported that the Trai and DoT have been targeting spammers and blocking numbers that seem suspicious. 

Additionally, they have met with representatives from telecom companies to establish new rules regarding vigilance and curbing unwanted activities to control them more effectively. The company has developed an AI-driven tool that helps identify spam and sends an alert to customers if it detects it. A blockchain-based spam control system has been rolled out by Vodafone Idea as part of its SMS spam control program. 

As part of Bharti Airtel's campaign to handle the issue of spam for customers, the company launched India's first network-based, AI-powered spam detection solution on Wednesday. It has been a long time since they met with top representatives from telecom companies and asked them to be vigilant against these criminal activities as well as stipulating new rules to counter them in the future. 

A report issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the Department of Telecommunications has indicated that over a crore fraudulent mobile connections have been disconnected, as well as 2.27 lakh handsets that are subject to financial fraud and cybercrime. According to Trai, mobile operators have been encouraged to disconnect telecom resources that are used for bulk spam calls and they have stated that such entities could be blacklisted for up to two years if they are not disconnected. 

Furthermore, telecom companies will be required to check all SMS transmissions containing non-whitelisted URLs, to reduce the misuse of SMS headers and templates and, as a result, ensuring that standard SMS protocols are followed. Trai has mandated as of November 1, all telecommunications operators shall ensure the traceability of messages from the point of origin to the point of destination. 

 According to Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal, spam has become a menace for its customers. It is believed that the entire industry needs to work together to resolve this problem comprehensively... (and) to shield our customers from the continuous onslaught of intrusive and unwanted communications. The Vodafone Idea announced that it will launch soon a URL whitelisting platform, stating, "Vi is participating actively on the topic along with the TRAI, COAI, and other relevant groups.". 

Airtel's data scientists are using a proprietary algorithm to identify and classify calls and SMSs as 'suspected SPAM' through the AI-powered solution developed in-house by Airtel's data scientists. A network powered by artificial intelligence analyzes, in real-time, several parameters including the usage patterns of the caller or sender, the frequency of calls and SMS, and the duration of the calls, among other factors. 

As a result of comparing the information you provide with this information with known spam patterns, the system can flag suspicious calls and SMSs. Further, Airtel has developed a system that notifies customers when malicious links are sent via SMS. To achieve this, Airtel has built a centralized database of blacklisted URLs, and every SMS is scanned in real-time by an AI algorithm to alert users in order not to click on those links accidentally.