An official release states that the government has blacklisted 'principal entities' behind SMS headers that have been sent over 10,000 fraudulent messages over the past three months as part of a crackdown on SMS scammers. As part of the Sanchar Saathi initiative, the Department of Telecom (DoT) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) have taken decisive steps to prevent potential SMS fraud, which was launched by the Department of Telecom (DoT). 

According to the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), eight SMS headers are being misused to send fraudulent messages for committing cybercrime. In the past three months, the Department of Transport has taken down more than 10,000 fraudulent messages sent using eight headers. These messages belong to eight different Principal Entities (PEs). 

There is a list of the 8 principal entities listed below, along with the 73 SMS headers they own and the 1522 SMS content templates associated with them. There is no longer any possibility of sending SMS via any telecom operator thanks to DoT's steps, which have prohibited the use of any of these Principal Entities, SMS Headers, or templates. 

According to the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center, which is under the Ministry of Human Resources, eight SMS headers were misused to send fraudulent communications to commit cybercrime. The term 'principal entity' is commonly used in telecom parlance to refer to business or legal entities that send out commercial messages via SMS to subscribers of mobile operators. Headers can be considered to be alphanumeric strings assigned to a 'principal entity' to send commercial communications. 

In addition, DoT has reiterated its commitment to safeguarding citizens against cybercrime by blacklisting these entities to prevent further victimization of citizens. According to the release, “Citizens can report suspected fraud communications at Chakshu facility on Sanchar Saathi to help DoT in preventing cybercrime and financial frauds from being perpetrated by telecom companies.” TRAI has mandated that only registered principal entities can send promotional and marketing messages to mobile consumers as per its mandate. 

Following the mandate, all commercial messaging (one-time passwords, promotional messages, account balance updates etc) was required to be moved onto the blockchain-based platform by telecom operators. In the country, the government does not permit telemarketing activities, so mobile numbers cannot be used. Upon the first complaint, consumers may be disqualified from their telephone connection if they use the connection to send promotional messages. 

Additionally, they may also be blacklisted for two years with their name and address being blacklisted. You can identify telemarketing calls by their prefixes: 180, 140, and 10-digit numbers cannot be used for telemarketing. You can report spam by dialing 1909, or by using the Do Not Disturb (DND) service.