Airtel, Google bring AI-powered spam protection security to Android phones

For the last few years, particularly in post- Covid pandemic era (after 2022), there has been a surge in online fraud, such as digital arrest, stock market trading investment scams, phishing attacks on naive smartphone users, particularly senior citizens in India.

While people have been advised to be cautious while on the internet and when they receive emails and messages from unknown people, avoid sharing personal details, platform owners such as Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple, even telecom operators, are also rolling out security measures to protect their subscribers.

Now, Airtel, in collaboration with Google, has announced new telecom-grade safeguards to block spam and fraud messages on Android phones.

“At Airtel, we are obsessed with customer protection and continue to be at the forefront to lead India’s fight against spam. We do this by harnessing data, intelligent networks and relentless innovations so our customers are protected end-to-end. In a pioneering initiative, we have now partnered with Google to extend customer protection beyond the telco domain and made the rich messaging platform safer and more secure. We now call on the broader OTT communication platforms to work with us and make sure that customers are protected from the spam and financial fraud menace,” said Gopal Vittal, Executive Vice Chairman – Bharti Airtel.

Airtel has integrated the company's proprietary intelligent tech with the RCS (Rich Communication Service) platform and Google’s advanced spam protection security system.

The integrated security system is capable of validating the message sender’s identity using telco-backed business identity checks.

It will also know users’ DND preferences by categorising communications as promotional or transactional and imposing restrictions accordingly. 

It promises to block spam business messages from reaching customers’ devices. Also, most importantly, filter out malicious domains through a multitiered threat detection layer.

And, it will block messages from individual senders who have been jointly flagged by Google and Airtel's AI-powered spam filters.

“This pioneering partnership in India with Airtel helps ensure that mobile users can communicate with confidence. We are committed to continuing to work with the broader ecosystem of carriers to standardise messaging security and create a consistent and trusted messaging experience for all RCS messaging users around the world,” said Sameer Samat, President, Android Ecosystem at Google.

Airtel has noted that for the past one and a half years, it has introduced measures to curb spam and digital fraud through a series of industry-first, AI-powered initiatives aimed at protecting customers across calls and messages.

To date, it has blocked a staggering 71 billion spam calls and 2.9 billion spam SMSes, which has led to a huge 68.7 per cent decrease in the value of financial losses on its network.

Last month, Airtel launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered One-Time-Password fraud-detection feature. The AI feature can intuitively identify potentially risky behaviour in messages and warn customers.

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