The home ministry has received at least one complaint every 5 hours of online gambling or betting in the last five years, News18 has learnt.
From 2018 to 2022, nearly 8,000 were received, according to the data compiled by the ministry confirmed by News18.
Interestingly, the government has found that online offshore betting/gambling platforms are now using news websites to advertise themselves on digital media.
The government also found that the logos of surrogate news websites bear striking resemblance to betting platforms. It is learnt that neither the betting platforms nor such news websites are registered under any authority of India. Such websites are promoting betting and gambling under the garb of news through surrogate advertising.
In fact, most of the apps are from Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi and Mumbai, and some are from the USA and Nigeria. The origin of most of these apps, however, is not available, a government official said.
According to sources, the government officials reviewed these apps based on four analysis parameters such as their traffic, communication network analysis, content analysis and OSINT (open source intelligence) data. It is learnt that the apps were reviewed on Google store in the name of foreign persons which were found fake.
These apps have also been found to acquire a host of critical permissions, which may be misused for possible compromise of user data or performing suspicious and malicious network activities. For example, these apps were collecting data and KYC, localisation of user data.
Most of the entities operating in the online gaming sectors are offshore, so it is required that they get registered in India and regulated for reporting of transactions. Most of them were running through third party apps.
Sources said a total of 288 such loan lending apps were under scrutiny and nearly 213 were reported by the Telangana police, which also recorded maximum suicides due to apps. Uttar Pradesh flagged 12 apps while the remaining were flagged by intelligence agencies.
Meanwhile, the government has initiated the process to ban and block 138 betting apps and 94 loan lending apps with Chinese links on “urgent” and “emergency” basis, News18 has learnt.
Top sources told News18 that these apps, often displaying predatory behaviour to trap individuals in massive debt can also be misused as tools for espionage and propaganda, besides posing a security risk to the data of the Indian citizens.
Almost all of these apps were the brainchild of Chinese nationals who hired Indians and made them directors in the operation. After luring desperate individuals into taking on a loan, they jacked up the interest by up to 3,000%.
When the debtors were unable to repay the interest let alone the entire loan, individuals representing these apps started the cycle of harassing those in debt, sending them lewd messages, threatening to release their morphed photos and shaming them with messages to their contacts. The issue was thrown into the spotlight after a spate of suicides, particularly in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, by those who opted for such loans or lost money to betting apps.
In its Loan Wolves of China https://www.news18.com/topics/loan-wolves-of-china series last year, News18 had exposed how these apps and Chinese nationals were exploiting loopholes to bait Indians and posed a major national security risk.
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