National helpline launched to report cyber frauds

Dialling 155260 — a national helpline — and informing a reporting platform could help you prevent financial loss due to cyber fraud.

The Ministry of Home Affairs on Thursday launched the national helpline reporting platform, a mechanism that helps people cheated in cyber frauds to report such cases and get the money back.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah operationalised the helpline and platform, which was made operational by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs, with active support and cooperation from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), all major banks, payment banks, wallets and online merchants.

Soft-launched on April 1, the national helpline will be available in seven states — Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh — covering more than 35% of the country’s population.

Roll out in the other states for pan-national coverage is underway to prevent the flow of money siphoned off by fraudsters, the MHA said.

Since its soft launch, the helpline has been able to save more than Rs 1.85 crore of defrauded money from reaching the hands of fraudsters, with Delhi and Rajasthan saving Rs 58 lakh and Rs 53 lakh respectively.

The Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System has been developed in house by I4C to integrate law enforcement agencies and banks and financial intermediaries.

"The facility empowers both the banks and the police, by leveraging new-age technologies for sharing online fraud related information and taking action in almost real-time. The loss of defrauded money in online cheating cases can be stopped by chasing the money trail and stopping its further flow before it is taken out of the digital ecosystem by the fraudster," the MHA said.

Explaining the workflow, the MHA said that victims can call the helpline, which is operated by the concerned state police. The operator notes down the fraud transaction details and basic personal information and reports to Citizen Financial Cyber Frauds Reporting and Management System.

It is then shared with concerned banks, wallets and merchants and so on, depending on whether they are the victim’s bank or the bank/wallet in which the defrauded money has gone.

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

"If the defrauded money is still available, the bank puts it on hold, i.e., 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," it added.

Currently, the Helpline and its Reporting Platform has all the major public and private sector banks onboard, including the State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Union Bank, IndusInd, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis, Yes and Kotak Mahindra Bank. It also has all major wallets and merchants such as PayTM, PhonePe, Mobikwik, Flipkart and Amazon linked to it.