Ring of Safety: Airtel’s International Call Alerts Raise the Bar for Scam Protection

Image Source: Telecom Talk

Bharti Airtel has accelerated its battle against telecom fraud by taking its AI-driven spam alert feature across international calls and messages, providing unparalleled security for its 375+ million customers. The development comes when scam calls and SMSes are on the rise globally, with fraudsters increasingly making use of international numbers and spoofed identities to target Indian users.

Highlights:

International Call Display: Airtel will automatically show "International Call" for all calls received from outside India, assisting users to immediately recognize and block suspicious or spoofed numbers. Following the Department of Telecommunications' (DoT) introduction of the International Incoming Spoofed Calls Prevention System, more than 13.5 million such calls were blocked in 24 hours of release.
AI-Driven Spam Identification: Airtel's proprietary, double-layer AI platform filters 1.5 billion messages and 2.5 billion calls on a daily basis, marking potential spam in real time. The platform has already detected 100 million probable spam calls and 3 million spam SMSes each day, alerting more than 252 million unique customers and lowering answered spam calls by 12%.
Comprehensive Protection: The service also alerts customers to malicious SMS links and identifies anomalies such as repeated IMEI changes, a common indicator of fraud. The spam alert facility is free, auto-enabled, and does not need any customer action or app download.
National Impact: Ever since its launch, Airtel's network has identified 8 billion spam calls and 0.8 billion spam SMSes, with Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, and Western UP being the most targeted areas.

Airtel's enhanced spam and international call alert system is a new benchmark in telecom security that enables users to move around the digital world with increased confidence.

Source: Airtel Press Release, Economic Times, TelecomTalk, Mobile ID World