New Delhi: The Delhi Police will soon sign an MoU with caller ID verification platform Truecaller to help the public identify verified numbers and protect themselves from cybercrimes and scams relating to impersonation in the name of government officials.
In addition to educating Delhiites and holding a joint awareness campaign against cyber frauds, Truecaller will soon help display official numbers of the Delhi Police representatives on the app’s government directory services, police said.
Suman Nalwa, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Public Relations Officer), told PTI, “During the Covid pandemic, Truecaller had helped us a lot because there were a lot of scams and frauds reported then on the pretext of selling oxygen cylinders, concentrators, medicines and other essentials associated with treatment of the deadly virus. So, then our officials identified the number of those fraudsters and alerted Truecaller which displayed those unverified numbers as spam.”
“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 pictures of senior officers on their WhatsApp profile,” Nalwa added.
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 campaign will help users identify verified numbers and protect them from frauds and scams relating to impersonation in the name of government officials. All verified numbers of 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,” Nalwa added.
“As per the MoU, we will have to share our official contact numbers for inclusion in the government directory services feature. We will also need to alert Truecaller about the latest cybercrime threats and trends and share numbers on spam or scam on a regular basis,” she said.
Besides this, Truecaller will also help in generating awareness about cyber safety by conducting cyberwise training sessions with the assistance of Delhi Police. It will help educate the public about better ways to tackle cyber fraud.
It will also disseminate the Delhi Police-cyber safety videos through the online cyber safety curriculum created by Truecaller which will share push notifications to users within the app about Delhi Police’s initiatives on cyber safety, important helpline numbers and their highlights.
