As per the latest draft Indian Telecommunication bill, 2022, fake identity on SIM cards and OTT communication platforms may put you in trouble. Step has been taken by the government to tackle the online identity problem.
It will help in preventing Cyber fraud including financial fraud and illegal activities from happening using telecommunication services. It has been taken into consideration since there are several instances of fraud happening by cyber criminals using fake documents to get SIM cards and hiding their identity on OTT apps including WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and so on to make calls.
Section 4, sub-section 7 of the bill has stated that the users are required to declare their real identity. Misrepresentation will be considered a cognizable offense and can lead to even imprisonment. The offender can get arrested without any warrant or can be fined up to rupees 50K. With this, the authorities are trying to bring the information to the user about who is calling. As per the information provided by the official explainer, the user should know who is calling. The core purpose of this is to prevent cyber fraud using telecom services.
The government has been rigorously trying to tackle the financial fraud issue and has mandated that it will come up with a Know-Your-Customer (KYC) formality for the users of the OTT communication platforms.
The bill will tackle all the situations of cyber fraud and address them upfront in multiple ways, said communication minister Mr. Ashwini Vaishnav. He also added that he strongly believes that implementation of the bill can help in a significant reduction in cyber fraud. Moving forward, he also added that the difference between the voice and the internet call has faded away. He also added KYC is required to be done for all the platforms and services that need to come under one law.
