Hyderabad: Cyber criminals and underworld mafia can no longer hide behind ‘call spoofing,’ as investigating agencies have secured equipment to trace such calls, and also those being placed via Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) where the caller’s number is masked. Call spoofing allows the caller to hide his identity and use someone’s mobile number to mislead the target. Only those calling from countries which have not yet signed the Mutual Legal Agreement Treaty with India are difficult to trace.
The official from the department of telecom said, “In the last three years, we have tightened the requirements for Internet Service Providers. “We are tracing the culprits based on the Internet Protocol address utilised for VoIP calls.” He said, agencies like Intelligence, Counter Intelligence, CID and Task Force have been equipped with sophisticated tools to identify the callers.
Sub-inspector U. Madhan of the social media/hacking unit of the Hyderabad Central crime Station said that they had identified culprits who adopted call spoofing to threaten prominent persons in the city in two cases. A third case was under investigation as the call had been routed through a French telecom, and India does not have an MLAT with France. A source from the home department said that investigations were being prolonged as they had to pass different stages like obtaining prosecution orders followed by getting approval from the Union ministry of home affairs and securing the support of agencies in other countries.
Calls placed from RBI, bank phones:
The first call spoofing case was registered in India in 2006 when the then Mangalore MLA Khadeer received a call from underworld don Ravi Pujari. Many extortion gangs later adopted similar technology. In those days, only the payment details of credit cards were available to track down the callers, said an official from the cyber crimes unit who handled a few such cases.
“After 2011, many Android-based apps offered the facility to make spoof calls through mobile phones and it was difficult to nab criminals except with the help of the department of telecommunications,” the official said. Besides extortion and issuing threats, cyber crime gangs are adopting technology to cheat bank customers by using phone numbers of RBI and banks.
Mr Raghuram Patel, a techie from Alwal, said he had got such a call seeking his debit card details. “They used the number of the Alwal branch of my bank.
“When they asked me my card details stating that the card was about to expire, I disconnected the call. When I called the number back, the bank’s assistant manager answered and said he had had not called me.”
