Digital Frauds Surge in East UP: Airtel

Lucknow, Jul 9 (PTI) A sharp rise in digital fraud cases has been reported across eastern Uttar Pradesh, with cybercriminals increasingly targeting users through fake delivery links, phishing messages, and bogus banking alerts, according to Airtel.

Major urban centres, such as Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, and Prayagraj, have seen a worrying uptick, while districts such as Jaunpur, Kushinagar, Mau, Mirzapur and Kanpur Dehat that comprise large rural parts also witnessing growing instances of such cyber frauds, it noted.

Airtel in a statement on Wednesday said as part of its nationwide rollout of AI-powered fraud detection system, it has successfully safeguarded more than 15 million users in Uttar Pradesh (east) within just 56 days of launching the advanced features.

The telecom operator has 36,260,483 users in UP East, a company official here, citing TRAI data updated till May 2025. The figures for UP (West) were not immediately available, the official added.

"With Uttar Pradesh ranked as one of India's most digitally advanced states, the threat of online fraud has grown in both its urban and rural regions. Fraudsters increasingly target users through phishing links, fake deliveries, and spurious banking alerts," Airtel said.

"Cities like Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, and Prayagraj, along with remote areas such as Kanpur Dehat, Jaunpur, Kushinagar, Mau, and Mirzapur among others, have seen a sharp rise in such fraudulent attempts," it added, without any specific numbers on such offences.

On Wednesday, Bharti Airtel CEO Uttar Pradesh (East) Amit Gupta met Naveen Arora (IPS), ADG, Technical Services, Uttar Pradesh Police, to discuss Airtel's Fraud Detection Solution and explore collaborative measures to tackle the growing threat of cyber frauds in the state, according to the statement.

The company said its advanced system that scans and filters links across SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram, E-mail and other browsers are automatically enabled for all Airtel mobile and broadband customers.

"It leverages real-time threat intelligence to examine over 1 billion URLs daily and blocks access to harmful sites in under 100 milliseconds," Airtel stated.