Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has referred around 760 cases related to theft of passengers' travel details, which were used to register mobile devices, to Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for taking prompt action under Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA 2016).
The PTA has confessed that passengers' data, which was acquired for the process of mobile phone registration, is being misused with connivance of travel agents.
Spokesperson PTA Khurram Mehran said that in the wake of complaints related to theft of travel details of passengers, the PTA has referred such complaints to the FIA for taking prompt action under the PECA 2016.
Responding to the complaints, the FIA has started cracking down on people involved in the crime. The PTA hopes that joint efforts with the lead role of the FIA will curb identity misuse by fraudsters, he added.
An official of PTA said that Authority was aware of the issue that illegal mobile device registration was being carried out under identity theft ie. passport details of some passengers were being misused by fraudsters, and IMEI cloning ie. fake device being reprogrammed with a PTA approved IMEI.
The Device Identification & Registration System (DIRBS) of the PTA is capable of tracing and blocking illegally registered mobile devices. The public is therefore, advised to only use their own passports/CNICs for registration of devices and purchase only PTA approved devices, failing which all such mobile devices will be blocked immediately and legal action will be initiated against such persons.
The PTA told the meeting that 663,622 personal users had registered themselves since February 2019. Out of these 440,821 were registered under FBR baggage rule exemption with no tax, 12,293 were registered under duty paid category. It was told that that against 5.89 million commercial mobile phone imports in first four months of 2016, an increase to 9.27 million commercially imported phones was registered during the same period of 2019.
The Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication (MoITT) has also proposed the extension of the implementation of PECA, 2016 and SRO 904(I)/2017 for Device Identification Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) to Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB).
The Special Communication Organisation (SCO) has submitted PC-1 of the "implementation of PECA, 2016 and SRO 904(I)/2017 for DIRBS (Project No II/2017-2018) AJK and GB to the Planning Commission for consideration of Central Development Working Party (CDWP).
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