Laws and Policies

In an order dated 29 October 2026, the Supreme Court said proposed RBI safeguards must provide compensation of at least the amount lost by digital arrest and other cyber fraud victims where a financial institution's due diligence failure is established. The court also sought investigation updates from states and Union Territories and prevention proposals from WhatsApp and other intermediaries.

The European Commission has preliminarily found that TikTok's 'For You' feed breaches the Digital Services Act. It says the recommender system creates 'rabbit holes' of repeated content about sadness, isolation or body image, and that TikTok's mitigation measures are not effective. The finding is not a final decision. TikTok can reply, and a confirmed breach could lead to a fine of up to 6% of worldwide annual turnover.

Arattai, the Zoho messaging app, has begun binding accounts registered with Indian (+91) numbers to the active SIM on the user's primary device, under the Department of Telecommunications' SIM binding directions. Verification becomes mandatory for all signed-in +91 users on 30 November 2026. Tying a chat account to a live SIM closes a gap scammers exploit worldwide, and other countries and platforms should make it standard practice.

Southern Railway has told its divisions to act against passengers who play music, videos or reels on phone speakers in trains and stations. They can now be treated as causing a nuisance under Section 145(2)(a) of the Railways Act, as amended by the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2026. Offenders face a ₹1,000 fine and removal from the train, and repeat offenders face up to six months in jail or a fine of up to ₹5,000.

In an open letter to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, HSBC whistleblower Everett Stern says a $1.2 billion fine on Bank of America over unreported suspicious transactions linked to Chinese laundering networks, narcotics and sanctions violations will not stop money laundering. He calls for criminal referrals of executives, an end to "too big to jail" and a review of the bank's charter.

A statutory filing Meta must publish in India shows account-takeover complaints on Instagram rising from about 4,200 a month to 16,621 in July. The company says every ticket was answered. It does not say how many accounts came back.

India makes biometric verification mandatory after fake SIM racket; US and UK still allow anonymous prepaid

In a tale of two distilleries, a U.S. court ruled Anthropic's Claude was exceedingly transformative but fined it $1.5 billion for bootlegging the mash, while Delhi ruled OpenAI's ChatGPT left no trace of ANI's spirit in its final pour. AI law now has a single question: was your distillation licensed?

S4C is the structured state-level arm of India’s national cybercrime coordination framework. In Kerala, it formalises and strengthens the role of the Police Cyber Operations Division as the official state nodal body for cybercrime coordination with I4C.

State Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (S4C) in India, an initiative to enhance state-level digital crime fighting and law enforcement synergy.

Meta now requires advertisers running campaigns in India to declare if their ads use AI-generated or AI-edited media, adding an “AI info” label to boost transparency under the country’s new synthetic content rules.

Six specialized institutions — Navy Cyber Lab (Delhi), DFSL Mumbai, NFSU Goa, State FSL Jaipur, CFSL Kolkata, and BSF Central Drone Forensic Lab — have been notified as Examiners of Electronic Evidence under Section 79A of the IT Act. Published in the Gazette on 13 July 2026, these notifications significantly strengthen and decentralize India’s digital forensics infrastructure across computer, mobile, and drone domains.