DoT's 'Financial Fraud Risk Indicator' to Fight Cybercrime

New Delhi, May 21 (PTI) The Telecom Department has introduced the 'Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI)' that enables enhanced intelligence sharing with banks, UPI service providers and financial institutions, marking a major step towards tackling cyber fraud and financial crime, an official release said on Wednesday.

This will enhance cyber protection and validation checks in case of mobile numbers flagged with this tool, when digital payment is proposed to be made to such numbers.

FRI allows for swift, targeted, and collaborative action against suspected frauds in both telecom and financial domains, the release said.

"...Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has announced sharing of 'Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI)' with stakeholders -- an output from a multi-dimensional analytical tool developed as part of the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) to empower financial institutions with advance actionable intelligence for cyber fraud prevention," it said.

Explaining the 'Financial Fraud Risk Indicator', it said this is a risk-based metric that classifies a mobile number to have been associated with 'Medium', 'High', or 'Very High' risk of financial fraud.

This classification is an outcome of inputs obtained from various stakeholders including reporting on Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C's) National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP), DoT's Chakshu platform, and intelligence shared by banks and financial institutions.

"It empowers stakeholders -- especially banks, NBFCs, and UPI service providers -- to prioritise enforcement and take additional customer protection measures in case a mobile number has high risk," the release added.

On how advance notification would help, it said the Digital Intelligence Unit (DIU) of DoT regularly shares the list of mobile numbers that were disconnected (Mobile Number Revocation List - MNRL) with stakeholders along with the reasons for disconnections, say on account of involvement in cyber-crime, failed re-verification, exceeding prescribed limits. These numbers are also usually used for financial frauds.

"As the life of a mobile number that is misused in cyber frauds is generally few days, and full verification can take several days, an advance indicator on risk associated with such numbers is very useful. Thus, as soon as a suspected mobile number is flagged by a stakeholder, it undergoes multi-dimensional analysis, and classifies it into Medium, High, or Very High financial risk associated with it," it said.

It then shares this assessment about the number immediately with all stakeholders through DIP.

An initial adopter of FRI, PhonePe, has used it to decline transactions linked to Very High FRI mobile numbers and display an on-screen alert as part of PhonePe Protect feature.

"The data shared by PhonePe indicates the efficacy of the model as the predictability of the numbers passed as soft signal to be actually involved in cyber fraud cases has been found to be very high. For Medium FRI numbers, PhonePe is working for displaying a proactive user warning before allowing the transaction," the release said.