Bharti Airtel says its AI-powered cybersecurity system blocked 1.62 million malicious links hidden in spam SMS messages over two months, the company reported on September 25.

The figures are company-reported and cover Airtel’s automated spam-detection shield, which scans messages in real time to flag phishing links and fraud attempts before they reach users. The telco says the system has steadily improved since launch.

India remains one of the world’s biggest targets for SMS fraud, with scammers impersonating banks, delivery firms and government agencies. Telecom operators have faced pressure from regulators to do more to protect subscribers.

Airtel says it will keep refining the AI models as fraudsters change tactics. Independent verification of the numbers was not available, but the scale underscores how industrialized text-message fraud has become.

Regulator TRAI has tightened sender-verification rules for all operators. Airtel says the shield keeps learning from new fraud patterns, though scammers continually adapt their methods.