Police to partner with Truecaller to protect people from cyber frauds

New Delhi: The Delhi Police is all set to sign an agreement with caller ID verification platform Truecaller to help people identify verified numbers and protect themselves from cyber frauds and scams involving the impersonation of officials from government agencies.

In addition to educating Delhiites and holding a joint awareness campaign against cyber frauds, Truecaller will also display official numbers of the Delhi Police representatives on the app's government directory services, police said.

"During the Covid pandemic, Truecaller helped us a lot as a lot of scams and frauds on the pretext of selling oxygen cylinders, concentrators, medicines and other essentials associated with treating the deadly virus were reported. So, our officials had identified the numbers of fraudsters and alerted Truecaller which displayed those unverified numbers as spam," Suman Nalwa, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Public Relations Officer), told PTI.

"Now we are signing an MoU with them following which, they will verify all the official contact numbers of the Delhi Police since fraudsters have many times posed as officials of the force and extorted money from the public by displaying picture of senior officers on their WhatsApp profile," she said.

This will help users identify verified numbers and protect them from frauds and scams involving the impersonation of government officials, Nalwa said, adding that all verified numbers of the Delhi Police will have a green badge and a blue tick mark, with a government service tag highlighting that it has been verified for users.

Pragya Misra, Director of Public Affairs, Truecaller, told PTI, "We are very excited about our partnership with the Delhi Police that will create much wider awareness in the community on ways to stay safe that will benefit citizens significantly and improve their digital safety."

"Our sophisticated caller identification and spam detection feature for calls and SMSs continues to play an important role in preventing people from frauds and scams. We stay committed to promoting safety in digital communications, especially for vulnerable sections like first-time internet users, women and senior citizens," Misra said.

According to officials, Truecaller will also mark the phone numbers furnished by the Delhi Police against whom it has received complaints regarding harassment, scam or other registered issues. This will help Delhiites protect themselves and alert them in case these numbers continue to remain active, the force said.