Chennai, Sept 30:
India’s digital economy is expanding rapidly, but cyber fraud is also growing in scale and sophistication. The threat now extends beyond spam calls and phishing messages to include impersonation scams, fake banking requests, malicious links, investment fraud and OTP-linked financial scams.
According to the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), Indians lost more than ₹52,976 crore to cyber fraud over the past six years. NCRB data has also indicated a rise in cybercrime cases, highlighting the growing need for stronger digital protection as online services become increasingly embedded in banking, payments, healthcare, commerce and government services.
Airtel said it anticipated this shift and launched India’s first network-based, AI-powered spam detection solution by a telecom provider in 2024. Its Safe Network initiative uses network intelligence and artificial intelligence to identify and mitigate digital threats without requiring customers to install additional applications or manually report suspicious activity.
The company said its AI-powered system has identified more than 98.4 billion spam calls and 4.4 billion spam messages since its launch. Airtel has also blocked more than 1.62 million malicious links shared through SMS, messaging apps, emails and browser redirects for its mobile and Wi-Fi broadband subscribers.