Government Launches Spam-Call Reporting Platform Chakshu

The government has launched two new platforms—one aimed at citizens and the other at better inter-agency efforts—as part of its attempt to curb the menace of cybercrime and spam calls.

The Department of Telecommunications launched the Digital Intelligence Platform and Chakshu on Monday as part of the Sanchar Saathi portal, which was unveiled in May last year.

Chakshu can be used by citizens to report suspected fraudulent communication, wherein users can report numbers, messages and phishing attempts.

Users can log on to the Chakshu window inbuilt on the Sanchar Saathi portal and fill out a form with details pertaining to the medium of the fraud communication, such as SMS, call or WhatsApp. Users are then required to define what category the communication fits in, such as sextortion, fake consumer helpline, fake KYC, and impersonation, among others. This is followed by screenshots of the communication and any other details to be added.

The Digital Intelligence Platform is an inter-agency effort to enable the sharing of cybercriminal data between banks, social media platforms, and wallet operators, among other stakeholders.

"Data will be shared, almost in real-time, with all stakeholders in case of suspected fraud," IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said. "Earlier, law enforcement, banks, and financial service providers were all asked to report fraudulent numbers, but they did so individually."

"But DIP is a unified platform to immediately report these frauds. This is a natural progression from the system we launched in last May and the pace at which we can detect cyber fraud will improve drastically with these two platforms," he said.

Across such platforms, frauds worth an estimated Rs 1,008 crore have been prevented, he said.

The DoT, in May 2023, launched the Sanchar Saathi platform. "We've also effectively controlled fraudulent international calls, which had become a menace in the recent past," Vaishnaw said.