By Ananya Sharma, Technology Correspondent
Updated: June 17, 2025
Key Quote from Google’s Official Blog
“Our new Safety Charter combines AI-powered protections, policy enforcement and ecosystem partnerships to help Indians avoid up to ₹20,000 crore in cyber-fraud losses this year,”
— Rajiv Sinha, Head of Trust & Safety, Google India blog.google
What Is the Safety Charter?
On June 17, 2025, Google rolled out its Safety Charter for India, a blueprint focused on three pillars:
- User Protection: Real-time scam detection in products like Google Pay, Messages and Search.
- Enterprise Security: Quantum-ready defenses and AI-led vulnerability scanning for businesses and government counterparts.
- Responsible AI: Standards for transparency, fairness and privacy in all fraud-fighting algorithms. tribuneindia.comapacnewsnetwork.com
UPI-related frauds alone cost Indian users ₹1,087 crore in 2024, according to Google’s data, and the company warns unchecked cyber-fraud could reach ₹20,000 crore in 2025 timesofindia.indiatimes.com.
5 Key Measures Under the Charter
- Digikavach Expansion: AI-driven awareness campaigns reaching over 177 million Indians so far, in partnership with the Ministry of Home Affairs and I4C. blog.google
- Google Pay Alerts: Over 41 million fraud warnings issued to UPI users, blocking suspicious transactions before completion. moneycontrol.com
- Play Protect Boost: Nearly 60 million high-risk app installs blocked by October 2024 pilot, now scaling nationally. moneycontrol.com
- Search & Chrome Defenses: AI enhancements catching 20× more scam pages and slashing phishing-site impressions by 80 percent. blog.google
- Ads Policy Enforcement: Removal of 247 million non-compliant ads and suspension of 2.9 million advertiser accounts in 2024. blog.google
Expert Analysis
In an exclusive interview, Dr. Ravi Kumar, Associate Professor of Cybersecurity at IIT Delhi, praised these measures:
“Google’s integration of large-language models for real-time scam detection marks a paradigm shift. By combining on-device AI with centralized threat intelligence, they’re raising the bar for fraud prevention in digital payments.”
Dr. Kumar’s research on UPI-based attacks at IIT Delhi underscores the need for both technological safeguards and user education, a balance the Charter aims to achieve.
Timeline of Key Developments
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| Oct 2023 | DigiKavach pilot launched in collaboration with FACE & I4C |
| FY 2023 vs FY 2024 | UPI fraud incidents rose from 7.25 lakh to 13.42 lakh cases moneycontrol.com |
| Jun 17, 2025 | Safety Charter unveiled at Safer with Google India Summit |
| Q3 2025 (Projected) | Rollout of Safety Engineering System across enterprise clients |
Daily Digest
- Thursday, June 19: Google to host a webinar with CERT-In on “AI in Cyber-Fraud Prevention.”
- Weekly Update: Check back every Monday for fresh stats on scam block rates and new partnership announcements.
Fact-Check
- UPI Fraud Losses: ₹1,087 crore in 2024 per Google’s June 2025 blog blog.google; corroborated by Finance Ministry data showing a near doubling of reported incidents (7.25 lakh to 13.42 lakh) from FY 23 to FY 24 moneycontrol.com.
- Projected Losses: Up to ₹20,000 crore in 2025 if no new measures adopted timesofindia.indiatimes.com.
