Safer Internet Day 2025: Staying Ahead and Keeping the Digital Ecosystem Secure

🛡️ Google Expands DigiKavach Initiative to Combat Online Scams & Financial Fraud

With the rapid growth of digital transactions, cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated. Under DigiKavach, Google’s initiative to mitigate financial fraud and online scams, the company is taking major steps to protect users through awareness campaigns, security enhancements, and industry collaborations.

📢 Raising Awareness with the DigiKavach 'Mauka Gawao' Campaign

• 📢 Launched to educate users about job, investment, and loan scams that are too good to be true.
• 🌍 177 million Indians have been reached so far.
• 📊 Focuses on digital literacy and preventing users from falling for fraudulent schemes.

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🔐 Strengthening Security Across Google Products & Platforms

🚀 Enhanced Play Protect: Stopping Harmful Apps

• 🛑 In India, the pilot reached 50% coverage by January 21, 2025, blocking over 13.9 million installation attempts of harmful apps.
• 📱 Globally, scanned 200 billion apps daily, identifying 13 million malicious apps outside Google Play.
• ⛔ 158,000+ developer accounts banned for policy violations.

💰 Fraud Prevention & Scam Detection

• 💳 Prevented fraudulent transactions worth over ₹13,000 crores on Google Pay.
• ⚠️ Displayed 41 million fraud warnings to safeguard Indian users.
• 📺 YouTube: Removed 4.1 million channels and 85,000 scam videos in Q3 2024.

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📡 Fighting Clickbait & Misinformation

• 🎭 Strengthened efforts to combat clickbait on sensitive news and current events.
• 🕹️ Introduced ShieldUp! mobile game to educate users on scam detection.
• 🎮 Game-based learning showed a stable 21-day impact in helping users identify scams.

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🤝 Cross-Industry Collaborations for a Safer Internet

🔗 Google’s Key Partnerships Under DigiKavach

• ⚖️ Partnered with the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre to streamline fraud reporting.
• 🏦 Integrated Google Pay with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal.
• 🌍 Joined the Safer Internet India Coalition alongside banks, telecoms, and fintech players.

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🌎 Expanding Digital Literacy with Ecosystem Partners

• 📢 Google.org provided grants to nonprofits for media literacy.
• 🛡️ CyberPeace Foundation: Trained 197,000+ individuals on responsible online behavior.
• 💡 Asia Foundation: Educating 45,000 MSMEs to combat cyber threats.

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🚀 AI-Driven Security & Fraud Detection

🔍 Advanced AI Tools for User Protection

• 🎭 Introduced SynthID, embedding metadata in AI-generated images, videos, and text.
• 📢 On YouTube, creators must now disclose AI-generated content, ensuring transparency.

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📢 Google’s Commitment to a Safer Digital India

Google remains dedicated to protecting users from evolving cyber threats through security advancements, AI-driven fraud detection, and industry-wide collaboration. Users can contribute by reporting scams across Google platforms, helping build a safer, more secure digital ecosystem.

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📌 Keywords:

Google DigiKavach, financial fraud prevention, online scam detection, Google Play Protect, cybersecurity awareness, scam protection India, AI-powered security, fraud prevention technology, Blogs by Gaurav Singh (gauravsinghigc)