TRAI seeks IT Act powers to crack down on Truecaller, Hiya over spam tagging of business calls. TRAI asks for enforcement powers under the Information Technology (IT) Act to take action against caller identification applications such as Truecaller. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has sought greater enforcement powers under the Information Technology (IT) Act to take action against caller identification applications such as Truecaller, Hiya and Whoscall for allegedly marking legitimate business calls as spam. TRAI asks for IT Act powers from Ministry to crack down on Truecaller. The move comes as the telecom regulator raises concerns over official business numbers, including those beginning with the 1400 and 1600 series, being incorrectly flagged or blocked by these platforms. According to TRAI, such mislabelling disrupts communication between businesses, financial institutions, healthcare providers, government agencies and the public. Officials have warned that if legitimate calls continue to be flagged, businesses may increasingly shift to using regular mobile numbers to reach customers. Such a trend, TRAI believes, could undermine ongoing efforts to curb spam calls and make it more difficult for consumers to distinguish genuine calls from fraudulent ones. India has stepped up efforts to combat spam and scam calls in recent years, with millions of consumers receiving unsolicited or fraudulent calls every day. While caller identification apps play an important role in helping users identify suspicious callers, TRAI argues that legitimate organisations also require dependable communication channels for critical customer and public service outreach. The regulator's proposal aims to strike a balance between consumer protection and business communication by introducing greater accountability for digital caller identification platforms without compromising users' ability to detect fraudulent calls. At present, TRAI cannot take direct action against apps such as Truecaller because they fall outside the jurisdiction of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and are governed under a different regulatory framework. The regulator has therefore sought powers to initiate action for violations under the IT Act rather than regulate the applications directly. While Truecaller has maintained that it complies with applicable regulations, TRAI officials have argued that the absence of enforcement powers limits the regulator's ability to address repeated instances of incorrect call labelling. According to officials, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) have agreed in principle to TRAI's proposal. However, a final decision on granting the regulator additional powers is still awaited.

VodafoneThree blocks 2 million dodgy bank texts. VodafoneThree has worked up a new solution designed to address banking scams, as fraudulent communications become increasingly sophisticated. July 6, 2026 The UK telco partnered with Barclays bank, the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF), and the Cyber Defence Alliance to develop a proof-of-concept (PoC) that adds new, bespoke rules to its existing SMS firewall. So far the results have been encouraging - the PoC is better at differentiating between fraudulent and legitimate SMS content from banks to their customers, leading to the successful interception of 2 million fraudulent messages and counting. In fact, it is going well enough that Voda has since extended the PoC to include the Co-operative Bank and TSB. Voda said the solution builds on its existing fraud prevention activities, which blocked more than 139 million scam messages in 2025 alone. "Preventing fraud on our network and protecting trust in the UK's digital economy is a huge priority," said Rachel Andrews, director of corporate security and fraud, VodafoneThree. "With fraud now accounting for 44% of all crime, no single organisation can tackle it alone. We're working closely with banks, government, law enforcement, and industry partners to stay ahead, evolving our capabilities as quickly as fraudsters change their tactics." "What's clear is that we need to innovate as well, scaling new solutions like this is crucial in making the UK one of the toughest places in the world for fraudsters to operate." In addition to getting to grips with SMS fraud, Voda also recently partnered with spam call protection specialist Hiya, which led to the launch of Scam Call Protection - a network-level feature that analyses incoming calls to automatically detect and flag suspicious-looking numbers. Of course, it's not just Voda that's fighting the good fight. EE in April upgraded its Scam Guard service with a whole host of new features: AI Triple-Lock Protection; Scam Assistant; Mobile Device Security; and Dark Web Monitoring. Among other things, they monitor for potentially fraudulent emails and texts, and operates as a fraud-reporting service that allows users to upload screenshots of suspicious-looking messages, Websites, QR codes and so-on. Like Voda, EE also offers a network-level call-labelling system. Meanwhile, Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) in March launched Call Defence. Also underpinned by Hiya's tech, it is similar to Voda's and EE's offerings in that it can also identify and label potentially unscrupulous callers. It claims to have labelled more than 1 billion such calls. Unlike call-screening features, which still allow untrustworthy calls to be placed to potential victims albeit with a label attached, Voda's new PoC is designed to prevent fraudulent text messages from getting through to customers altogether. For obvious reasons, banks are particularly susceptible to being impersonated by scammers - in the UK alone, banks lose around £1.17 billion to fraud every year. "Banks sit at the frontline of the UK's fight against fraud, and their role has never been more critical. Together, we're leading the way by stepping up our work with banks to strengthen protections and accelerate new solutions," said Nick Gliddon, business director at VodafoneThree. "And we're challenging partners across the sector to match that ambition by working with us to raise the bar and better protect customers at scale." Fraud is still on the rise. According to fraud prevention service Cifas earlier this year, cases reached 444,000 in 2025 - a record high. While this concerted effort by the mobile industry to clamp down on scams is to be applauded, we'll have to wait and see whether it has a meaningful impact on the scale of the problem. Freelance writer Nick is a freelancer who has covered the global telecoms industry for more than 15 years. Areas of expertise include operator strategies; M&As; and emerging technologies, among others. As a freelancer, Nick has contributed news and features for many well-known industry publications. Before that, he wrote daily news and regular features as deputy editor of Total Telecom. He has a first-class honours degree in journalism from the University of Westminster. Want more Telecoms.com stories in your Google search results? Join 56,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.