TRAI New Rule No OTPs from December 1 for Jio Airtel Vodafone Idea BSNL

Life has become easier with smartphones and technology, but with it the danger is also increasing. Incidents of cyber crime keep coming to light every day, in which people’s personal information and money are being looted the most. Now, to prevent the menace of spam SMS messages and phishing attacks, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has asked all telecom providers including Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea (Vi) and government-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited BSNL from December 1. Asked to implement traceability rules.

TRAI’s traceability rules state that all messages from senders must be traceable to prevent misuse of messaging services for spam and phishing. Earlier the telecom regulator had asked the providers to implement the rules by October 1, 2024. Later it was extended till November 1 and now the last date has been fixed as December 1. Apart from promotional and telemarketing messages, the traceability rule also affects the one-time-password (OTP) that a person uses to access the app and transfer money/access their bank account information.

Why TRAI wants to implement this new rule:

According to TRAI, unsolicited promo messages that may be classified as spam and phishing attacks by cyber scammers are on the rise and should be curbed. The regulator has warned that these messages are often used by scammers to collect personal information of users like OTP etc., which is used to access their bank accounts and launder money. With the new rule, it may take time for the OTP message to arrive. If you are thinking of going to bank or making reservation etc. then you may get late OTP for this. Let us tell you that TRAI has taken this step because scammers get access to users’ phones through fake OTP messages and cheat them heavily.