
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state police purged 28,724 websites and 21,000 social media accounts involved in financial fraud from cyberspace in 2024, official documents have revealed. The websites were removed after the cyber police wrote to the domain registrar highlighting the portals’ role in scamming people.
The removed websites included e-commerce sites, trading websites, fake job portals and sites that hosted malicious applications, enabling fraud by stealing login credentials and data theft.
The social media accounts connected to the scams were mostly identified on Meta and X, and were removed after the cyber police issued notices to the platforms.
This apart, the police also blocked close to 36,000 bank accounts that were found involved in organised cyber scams. The accounts were used by both domestic and international fraudsters to move funds swindled from their victims.
Sources said hundreds of the bank accounts blocked were found to have been used by rackets operating from Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. They included current bank accounts, used for channelling swindled cash.
A majority of the accounts was found acquired by scamsters through fraudulent ways, including paying the account holder a fixed amount as commission for each transaction.
The state police had earlier wrote to the Reserve Bank of India and the Ministry of Home Affairs seeking their intervention in preventing misuse of the bank accounts by cybercriminals.
State Police Chief Shaik Darvesh Saheb had urged the MHA and the RBI to rein in the unfettered use of current accounts of Indian banks from other countries. He had also sought a cap on the number of electronic gadgets using which digital transactions could be done. He had suggested that credibility scores be introduced for each account as it would enable users to identify fraudulent accounts.
13,877 SIM cards blocked
The police action also resulting in the blocking of 13,877 SIM cards that were used by scammers to contact the potential victims. This apart, 20,482 smartphones were permanently locked after it was found that they were used to place scam calls. The Department of Telecom locked the phones by blacklisting their International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI), unique to each phone, by acting on the state police’s request.