2025: PTA blocks millions of SIMs

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has taken massive action against illegal SIMs and cyber fraud over the past year. The aim of these measures is to secure the telecom system and protect the public from fraud.

According to the PTA, millions of illegal and inactive SIMs were blocked in the database cleaning process. According to the data, more than 5.1 million SIMs were blocked in a year.

These include inactive SIMs, SIMs registered in the names of deceased persons and SIMs issued on cancelled identity cards.

Officials say that more than 3.2 million SIMs in the names of deceased persons alone were blocked, while millions of SIMs registered on expired identity cards were also blocked.

The PTA also took action against websites selling illegal SIMs. According to the report, 83 websites were blocked that were involved in selling SIMs illegally. In addition, more than 100,000 SIMs of repatriated foreigners were also blocked.

PTA, in collaboration with the National Cybercrime Investigation Agency, conducted raids across the country to crack down on illegal activities. Dozens of operations were conducted in 24 cities over the course of a year.

Thousands of local and foreign SIMs were seized in these raids, while a large number of biometric devices and digital fingerprints were also seized.

Dozens of people were arrested during the operations who were involved in the illegal SIM business. PTA says that the surveillance system is being tightened further to break this network so that such crimes can be prevented in the future.

To protect the public, PTA has also imposed new restrictions on SIM vendors.

Now, three-factor authentication will be mandatory for issuing SIMs. Along with this, modern facilities like geo-fencing and live finger detection have been implemented on biometric devices.