Helpline 155260 Safe Secure Digital Payments Eco-system
Source : PIB
GS III : Challenges to internal security through communication networks, role of media and social networking sites in internal security challenges, basics of cyber security

Why in News ?

To provide safe and secure digital payments eco-system has operationalised the national Helpline 155260 and Reporting Platform for preventing financial loss due to cyber fraud.

Key Facts

• The National Helpline and Reporting Platform provides a mechanism for persons cheated in cyber frauds to report such cases to prevent loss of their hard earned money.
• The Helpline was soft launched on April 01, 2021.

  

• The Helpline 155260 and its Reporting Platform has been 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.
• 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.
• It is currently being utilized along with 155260 by seven States and Union Territories (Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh) covering more than 35 per cent of the country’s population.
• Roll out in the others States for pan-national coverage is underway to prevent the flow of money siphoned off by fraudsters.
• Since its soft launch in a short span of two months, Helpline 155260 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.
• Helpline and its Reporting Platform has all the major public and private sector banks onboard.
• It also has all major wallets and merchants such as PayTM, PhonePe, Mobikwik, Flipkart and Amazon linked to it.
• What is the Major Advantage ?
  • The success of the Helpline and Reporting Platform is the cheated money has been stopped from reaching fraudsters even after it has been moved by the cheats to five different banks to hide the trail.

How to it works ?

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

Cyber Frauds in India

• Based on a report by cybersecurity software company Norton Lifelock 27 million Indian adults were victims of identity theft in the past 12 months.
• 52% of adults in the country do not know how to protect themselves from cyber crime.

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