DailyPost 2964
DIGITAL ARRESTS – TELCOS AND BANKS ROLES
The world of digital arrests revolves around the police axis. If we move further we tend to fix the blame on the victim; ignorance, reckless, not matured and what not. Governance as it is understood in this country puts immense responsibilities on citizens. For that reason, the solution to digital arrests is to be found in the* awareness campaigns that would enable* the potential victims not fall for the meticulous trap laid out by the digital scammers. What is left beyond that is to plug the investigative loophole, and if that is done, the digital arrests problem gets sorted out, is the understanding.
Both the stances are quite far off from the truth, the exact responsibility of each stakeholder has to be objectively evaluated and fixed. Awareness and investigative depth with the present wherewithal is not likely to sort out the issue beyond a point. Given the fact that the issues of various stakeholders need to be resolved to gain a grip on the Digital Arrest epidemic, the two critical stakeholders are the telecommunication companies and the banks. The telecommunication companies seem to have no track of numbers, when it comes to such crimes.
Airtel and might be other companies have a system of deciding upon the nature of the call and so they are able to bifurcate spam and other related calls. Why not in this case? Is the process of issuing SIMs broken? On the operations side there is a need for collaboration amongst them. There is a need to create databases of suspect numbers and keep updating it the crowd sourced way. Dynamic updation and real time action is the key. Methods of whitelisting of government numbers and scrupulously following should also be completed.
On the banks much more needs to be done? How did the mule accounts get created in the first place? Is the KYC broken? There is a need for KYC Audit of all bank accounts asap. Biometric for KYC can be an answer. Banks cannot be left scot-free when the whole swindling is happening through the banks. The transfer of money into mule accounts can be stopped or drastically reduced by factoring in right business logic in the core banking software. In cases where scamsters are added as beneficiaries, because of the time taken for that purpose, it provides a golden window to act. AI can be put to great use for finding connections, deciphering patterns and predictions.
SILOED, NON REAL-TIME AND ABSENCE OF DYNAMIC DATABASES CAN TAKE US NOWHERE IN THIS FIGHT.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.