How Google plans to save Indians ₹20,000 Crore from cybercrime in 2025
Google unveiled its comprehensive Safety Charter for India on Monday, announcing AI-powered security measures that could prevent Indian entities from losing up to ₹20,000 crore to cybercrime in 2025. The initiative comes as UPI-related frauds alone cost Indians over ₹1,087 crore in 2024, with scammers increasingly using AI-generated content and deepfakes to deceive victims.The Safety Charter introduces three key pillars: protecting end users from online fraud, advancing cybersecurity for public infrastructure, and building AI responsibly. Google’s DigiKavach program has already reached 177 million users with fraud awareness campaigns and will expand through an official partnership with India’s Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C).“The digital sphere can be an engine of growth only as long as the citizenry that use it feel safe,” said Preeti Lobana, VP and Country Manager for Google India, emphasizing trust as the foundation of India’s digital economy.
AI-powered protection shields millions from daily scam attempts
Google’s AI systems are already delivering impressive results across its consumer platforms. Google Messages now protects users from over 500 million suspicious messages monthly using AI-powered scam detection, while Google Pay has displayed 4.1 crore warnings against potentially fraudulent transactions.The company’s search engine now catches 20 times more scammy pages before they cause harm, thanks to advanced AI integration including large language models. Google Play Protect has blocked nearly 6 crore attempts to install high-risk apps since its October 2024 pilot launch in India, protecting over 13 million devices from potential malware infections.In 2024 alone, Google removed 247 million fraudulent ads and suspended 2.9 million accounts for policy violations. The company’s enhanced Financial Services Verification policy has dramatically reduced fraudulent financial advertisements by requiring strict compliance with local regulations.Gmail continues to automatically block over 99.9% of spam, phishing, and malware attempts, safeguarding 2.5 billion inboxes globally. Android users receive over 2.5 billion warnings about opening suspicious URLs from unknown senders, with all detection happening on-device to maintain privacy.
Enterprise security gets quantum-ready upgrades
Beyond consumer protection, Google is strengthening enterprise and government cybersecurity infrastructure. The company’s Project Zero team, collaborating with Google DeepMind, recently discovered a critical vulnerability in SQLite using AI agents—marking the first public example of AI finding such security flaws in real-world software.Google is investing $5 million through Google.org to expand cybersecurity clinics across Asia-Pacific, including partnerships with Indian universities to strengthen local small and medium enterprises’ security capabilities. The initiative builds on an earlier $15 million commitment to The Asia Foundation’s APAC Cybersecurity Fund.The company is also advancing quantum-resistant security through collaboration with IIT Madras on Post-Quantum Cryptography research, preparing for future threats that could emerge with quantum computing capabilities.Google’s responsible AI approach includes rigorous testing, AI-assisted red teaming, and its SynthID technology, which has already watermarked over 10 billion pieces of AI-generated content. The company’s IndicGenBench initiative specifically fine-tunes language models for accurate performance across 29 Indian languages.“Safety is a shared responsibility,” the charter emphasizes, calling for collaboration across law enforcement, banks, civil society, and government bodies to create a resilient digital ecosystem for India’s 1.4 billion citizens.
