NEW DELHI: Nearly 3 lakh URLs carrying unlawful or harmful content were referred to social media platforms for takedown between March and July 2026, with States accounting for about 82 per cent of the notices, officials said quoting the government data.
The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), separately flagged around 51,000 URLs linked to cyber fraud, critical infrastructure and stock-investment scams as agencies stepped up efforts to curb the rapid spread of illegal online content, they said.
The two-year analysis by the cyber wing of the MHA has identified several major categories of unlawful material circulating online, the officials said, adding that these include content associated with transnational financial frauds, child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and offences targeting women and children.
“The findings have prompted agencies to strengthen coordination with social media and other internet intermediaries to ensure faster removal of such content,” they said.
“Of the 2.98 lakh URLs referred for removal during the four months, nearly 2.44 lakh were sent by State authorities. The remaining referrals included those made by the I4C, particularly in cases involving cybercrime, infrastructure-related threats and stock-investment frauds,” a senior official said, adding that Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the web address used to locate an online resource such as a webpage, file or image.
The government has also moved to significantly reduce the time available for intermediaries to act on unlawful content.
“Following an amendment to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, in February 2026, the prescribed takedown period was brought down to three hours from the earlier 36 hours,” the officials said.
The rules require intermediaries to maintain a grievance-redressal mechanism for complaints from users and victims.
They also provide for a three-tier grievance-redressal structure with different levels of self-regulation for publishers of news and current affairs content and curated audio-visual material.
To streamline enforcement, the MHA has developed the ‘Sahyog’ portal, which automates the process of sending notices to internet intermediaries by authorised government agencies under the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Click Here For The Original Source.
