Stock scams, CSAM among top unlawful content: MHA analysis

Stock-investment scams, transnational financial frauds among key unlawful contents rising: Agencies alert

By Rajnish Singh, New Delhi, August 25

Officials said the majority of this unlawful content was intimated by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). In its last two-year analysis, they said, the specialised wing of the MHA has noted that the miscreants post unlawful content that are majorly linked to transnational financial frauds, CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) and offences related to women and children.

During the period from March 2026 to July 2026, official data mentions that nearly 2.98 lakh URLs were sent to social media platforms for takedown, out of which 2.44 lakh were sent by states (which is nearly 82 per cent). Of these, the data says, 51,000 URLs were sent by the I4C in the context of cyber, infrastructure, and stock-investment scams

A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a unique web address used to find and access resources like web pages, files, or images on the internet.

To expedite action against unlawful content, officials said, the takedown time was reduced to three hours from earlier 36 hours by an amendment in February 2026 to the IT Intermediaries Rules 2021--a prescribe framework for the regulation of content by online publishers of news and current affairs content as well as curated audio-visual content. As per the rule, all intermediaries are required to provide a grievance redressal mechanism for resolving complaints from users or victims, and a three-tier grievance redressal mechanism with varying levels of self-regulation has been prescribed for publishers.

'Sahyog' Portal has been developed to automate the process of sending notices to intermediaries by the appropriate government or its agency under the IT Act, 2000, to facilitate the removal or disabling of access to any information, data or communication link being used to commit an unlawful act. It brings together all authorised agencies of the country and all the intermediaries on one platform for ensuring immediate action against unlawful online information. This portal helps achieve a safe cyberspace for the Citizens of India.

The portal, under the MHA, was launched to expedite the process of sending notices to IT intermediaries by the appropriate government or its agency under clause (b) of sub-section (3) of section 79 of the IT Act,2000 to facilitate the removal or disabling of access to any information, data or communication link being used to commit an unlawful act.

Besides such content, agencies have alerted about rising trends of cyber frauds from hotspot areas like Mewat, Jamtara, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Visakhapatnam, and Guwahati, where seven Joint Cyber Coordination Teams (JCCTs) have been constituted to enhance the coordination framework among the law enforcement agencies of the states and the Union Territories (UTs).

For immediate action, another official said that a state-of-the-art Cyber Fraud Mitigation Centre (CFMC) has been established at I4C, where representatives of major banks, financial intermediaries, payment aggregators, telecom service providers, IT intermediaries and representatives of states and UTs law enforcement agencies are working together for immediate action and seamless cooperation to tackle cybercrime.

In another move, CERT-In has empanelled 237 security auditing organisations to support and audit implementation of information security best practices.

As per recent data shared with the Parliament by the MHA, the 'Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS), under I4C, which was launched in 2021 for immediate reporting of financial frauds and to stop siphoning off funds by the fraudsters, financial amount of more than Rs 11,158 crore were saved in more than 32.80 lakh complaints till June 30 this year.

The MHA keeps on alerting citizens to get assistance in lodging online cyber complaints through a toll-free helpline number '1930', and it has developed the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) platform named 'CyTrain' portal for capacity building of police officers and judicial officers through online courses on critical aspects of cybercrime investigation, forensics and prosecution. More than 1,63,344 police officers and judicial officers from states and UTs are registered, and more than 1,61,957 certificates have been issued through the portal.

— ANI