IRCTC closed 3.5 crore accounts, is it yours too, check quickly and know the reason behind it

Indian Railways has taken a big action against ticket booking fraud. The Ministry of Railways has taken a big step to control the large scale fraud in railway ticket booking and has blocked 3.5 crore accounts of IRCTC. Railways has made some changes in the IRCTC application and many big changes are being made, due to which common users are expected to get rid of the problems faced during ticket booking.

Unauthorized agents associated with railway ticket booking do large scale fraud in ticket booking through fake emails. Indian Railways has taken many strict steps to get rid of this for the users. After this decision of Indian Railways, now no unauthorized ticket booking agent will be able to make multiple attempts simultaneously to increase the chances of getting a confirmed ticket for the passenger by creating fake accounts on the IRCTC platform.

Now there will be no fraud!

According to the agency, officials said on Wednesday that now no unauthorized ticket booking agent will be able to make multiple attempts simultaneously to increase the chances of getting a confirmed ticket for the potential passenger by using fake accounts on the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) platform. An IRCTC official said, “In a major step towards bringing fairness in the railway ticket booking system, IRCTC has come up with solutions through AI-based advanced techniques to curb unauthorized ticketing by detecting and deactivating such user IDs created with disposable (short term) email addresses and ensuring equal access for all passengers.

More than three crore accounts blocked…

The official said that IRCTC has blocked 3.5 crore fake user IDs in the last one year, which has significantly reduced the congestion of the system on its platform.

This is how bulk booking is done
The official explained how unauthorized agents misuse the platform, he said, “Suppose a person named A goes to an unauthorized agent to book a ticket from Delhi to Agra. The agent will use several disposable email IDs (using domain names available on Google) and mobile numbers to create 30 profiles on the IRCTC platform. While creating a user ID or profile, an OTP is sent to the email ID and the agent verifies using that OTP. However, after authentication, the email ID becomes invalid but the profile remains. Now, these unauthorized agents use multiple such profiles to book tickets for A. So there are 30 requests or attempts just to increase the chances of booking a ticket for A. They also use bots (automated software applications) for this purpose.

"Imagine, similar attempts are being made for 1,000 passengers, which is equivalent to 30,000 attempts. This limits the chances for potential passengers who make the same attempt," the railway official said. To counter these fraudulent attempts, IRCTC's latest artificial intelligence and machine learning-based bot detection techniques identify such accounts and disable them before they disrupt the booking system, he said.