Home Minister Amit Shah Operationalised Cyber Crime Helpline – 155260 To Report And Prevent Cyber Fraud

NEW DELHI: Union Home Minister Amit Shah made the the national Helpline 155260 and Reporting Platform to prevent financial loss due to cyber crime operationalised on Thursday. The move is yet another step towards Narendra Modi government’s commitment to providing a safe and secure digital payments eco-system.

The National Helpline and Reporting Platform provide a mechanism for victims of cyber fraud to report such incidents and avoid losing their hard-earned money.

The Helpline went live on April 1st of this year. The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) of the Ministry of Home Affairs has made the Helpline 155260 and its Reporting Platform operational, with active support and cooperation from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), all major banks, Payment Banks, Wallets and Online Merchants.

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I4C created the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System in-house to link Law Enforcement Agencies, Banks, and Financial Intermediaries. It is now used in conjunction with 155260 by seven states and union territories (Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh), accounting for more over 35% of the country’s population. The rollout of pan-national coverage in the other states is currently underway to limit the flow of money stolen off by fraudsters.

Helpline 155260 has saved more than Rs 1.85 crore of scammed money from reaching the hands of fraudsters in just two months since its soft launch, with Delhi and Rajasthan saving Rs 58 lakh and Rs 53 lakh, respectively.

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By exploiting new-age technologies for sharing online fraud-related information and taking action in near real time, the facility empowers both banks and police. The loss of fraudulent money in online cheating instances can be halted by pursuing the money trail and halting its further flow before the fraudster takes it out of the digital environment.

HOW DOES THE HELPLINE WORK:

a.            Victims of cyber fraud call on Helpline no. 155260, which is manned and operated by the concerned State Police.

b.            The Police operator notes down the fraud transaction details and basic personal information of the caller and submits them in the form of a Ticket on the Citizen Financial Cyber Frauds Reporting and Management System.

c.            The Ticket gets escalated to the concerned Banks, Wallets, Merchants and so on, depending on whether they are the victim’s bank or the bank/wallet in which the defrauded money has gone.

d.            An SMS is also sent to the victim with an acknowledgement number of the complaint with direction to submit complete details of the fraud on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (https://cybercrime.gov.in/) within 24 hours, using the acknowledgement number.

e.            The concerned Bank, which can now see the ticket on its dashboard on the Reporting Portal, checks the details in its internal systems.

f.            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.

All of the major public and private sector banks are currently on board with the Helpline and its Reporting Platform. State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Union Bank, IndusInd, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Yes Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank are among the notable ones. It is also linked to all major wallets and retailers, including PayTM, PhonePe, Mobikwik, Flipkart, and Amazon.

The Helpline and Reporting Platform’s success may be gauged by the fact that cheated money has been stopped from reaching fraudsters on multiple instances, even after it has been shifted by the cheats to five other banks to obscure the trail.

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