Call forwarding services will be discontinued by the government as of April 15, which is a significant decision for mobile subscribers

In a recent notification, the Telecom Department stated that subscribers who have enabled call forwarding using USSD may be requested to reactivate the service using alternate means, wherever it is guaranteed that these services won’t be turned on without your consent. The Department of Telecom (DoT) believes that USSD-based call forwarding services are being utilized in online and mobile phone-related scams, hence this decision has been made to prevent online fraud.

This is how people fall prey to con artists.

In this scenario, con artists phone your number and claim to be from your telecom operator and to have discovered a network issue with it. They then trick you by telling you that you need to dial *401# in order to fix the network issue.

It will now ask you to call an unknown number as soon as you dial this number. Following then, the scammer’s phone will receive all messages and calls on yours.

Drawbacks of forwarding calls

In addition, he will receive all transactions that come into your number, including those from your bank account, social media accounts, and internet purchases. Through this he can gain access to your social media accounts in addition to emptying your bank account. In addition, you can use call forwarding to have a second SIM card issued with your name and number.

Therefore, telecom providers such as Airtel and Reliance Jio would now need to come up with alternate ways to forward calls using Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) as per the directive from the Telecom Department. Smartphone users have also been encouraged to check their phones’ call forwarding settings and, in the event that call forwarding is enabled after dialing the ‘Star 401 hashtag,’ to turn it off right away.