NEW DELHI: The government on Friday said that new regulations to curb the practice of fraudulent SIM swaps or replacement by cyber criminals will be applicable from next Monday.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had issued the Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability (Ninth Amendment) Regulations 2024, in March this year, which will come into force on July 1.

"These amendment regulations are aimed at curbing the porting of mobile numbers by way of fraudulent SIM swap/replacement by unscrupulous elements," the TRAI said.

Through these amendment regulations, an additional criterion for the rejection of the request for allocation of a Unique Porting Code (UPC) has been introduced. Specifically, a UPC will not be allocated if the request for the UPC has been made before the expiry of seven days from the date of SIM swap/replacement. There has been a rise in such fraudulent SIM-swapping practices in the recent past, with dire financial implications for the users.