I4C, Amazon join hands to combat online frauds ahead of festive shopping season

New Delhi, Sep 14 (PTI) Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) and Amazon India on Sunday launched a nationwide initiative, 'ScamSmartIndia', to protect consumers from online scams, especially during the festive season. As part of the campaign, the Ministry of Home Affairs' I4C and Amazon will jointly drive a series of initiatives to take scam literacy to the grassroots and equip buyers with safe online shopping methods, ensuring a fraud-free festive season, according to an official statement.

These initiatives will include social media content that transforms complex fraud scenarios into easy-to-understand safety tips, digital ads featuring safety advisories, educational flyers in Amazon packages to guide consumers to shop safely during the festive season, as well as a national hackathon to develop AI-powered solutions for scam detection and prevention.

Explaining the urgency behind the initiative, I4C Director Nishant Kumar said, "Shopping during the festive season has become a natural part of every Indian family's habit. This is also a time of increased activity by online fraudsters. They try to cheat consumers, especially vulnerable groups like first-time internet users and senior citizens," he said.

Kumar added that this partnership with Amazon "will create awareness among consumers about how to detect fraud and avoid falling prey to them." Rakesh Bakshi, vice president (Legal) at Amazon India, acknowledged that online fraudsters misuse well-known brands, which "not only harm businesses but also hurt consumer trust in the country's entire digital economy." He stressed that through this partnership, they aim to "take proactive steps to create practical solutions that enable shoppers to identify, avoid and report fraud." The joint effort is especially relevant given the findings of McAfee's 'Global Festive Shopping Survey-2024,' which revealed that more than half of India's fraud cases occur online, with the risk escalating during the festive season.

I4C data shows Indians lost about Rs 7,000 crore to online scams in the first five months of 2025, with more than half of the money going to scammers operating from high-security locations in Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries. PTI SLM CDN MBI HIG AMJ AMJ