The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has been requested to ban ‘We Phone’ application in India as it facilities spoof calling. The request has come from an intelligence agency which has stated that the application allows subscribers to spoof the calling line identification (CLI) through a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) platform. The intelligence agency has added that any call initiated from ‘We Phone’ application is routed through its own server located abroad and therefore, it is difficult to identify and locate the actual calling number.

According to the Ministry of Communications and IT, the case has been forwarded to the group coordinator in the Department of Electronics and IT, who is the competent authority to issue instructions for blocking the public access of information through any computer resource.

Earlier, DoT had constituted a technical committee which observed that a number of computer and mobile applications offer the facility to spoof CIP over the internet. Based on the recommendations of the committee, certain websites facilitating CLI spoof were blocked in the country.