Western countries have lost interest in blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies (DLT) in the mad rush to solve every problem with AI, but India continues to build upon a highly successful implementation of DLT that prevents scam and spam calls and messages. The Indian DLT is already used to prevent imposters from hijacking the messaging Sender ID associated with reputable organizations, and all A2P SMS messages have to conform to pre-approved templates saved with the DLT. Now the Telecoms Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is taking consumer protection a step further with new anti-smishing constraints implemented via the DLT.
Whilst Malaysia has chosen to block the use of any URLs in A2P SMS messages and a growing number of European countries are considering automated scanning of SMS messages to identify and block harmful content including URLs, India is going to use the leverage created by their existing DLT to ensure only safe URLs will be allowed, without the threat to privacy implied by automatically reading every message. URLs will now need to be pre-approved and added to the DLT if an organization wants to include them in an A2P SMS message they send.
In addition, the DLT will manage the allow-list when A2P SMS messages include:
- Callback phone numbers;
- Links to OTT communications services; and
- APKs, as used to distribute phone apps.
Blocking of new content which does not match the DLT will begin on 1 September.
