The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India or TRAI is taking some serious steps to deal with fraudulent messages and at the same time bring about more transparency with respect to the messages that are being sent. On Tuesday, it asked all telecom operators to ensure that the trail of all messages from senders to recipients is traceable. Along with this, it has also asked major telecom operators like Reliance Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone-Idea to stop sending SMS that include certain links.
As per the directive issued by TRAI, telecom operators will not be able to send messages that contain URLs, APKs, OTT links, and more. This will come into effect starting next month.
“Effective from September 1, 2024, all access service providers will be prohibited from transmitting messages containing URLs, APKs, OTT links, or call back numbers which are not whitelisted by the senders,” TRAI said.
This is being done to curb the spread of fraudulent messages. Fraudsters often use such links to direct customers to malicious websites and steal their sensitive information which is eventually used to pull off a scam.
This isn’t the first when TRAI has taken such a step. It is consistently asking telcos to curb unauthorised telemarketers indulging in promotional calls and messages to telecom subscribers. Last week, it asked telecom operators to disconnect all telecom resources of unregistered telemarketers found making spam calls, and to blacklist them for up to two years.
Apart from this, TRAI has also introduced measures to deter the misuse of templates for promotional content.
“Content templates registered under the wrong category will be blacklisted, and repeated offences will lead to a one-month suspension of the sender’s services,” it said in the new directive. All message headers and content templates registered on DLT will now have to adhere to the prescribed guidelines.
Also, single content templates cannot be linked to multiple headers, TRAI said.