The Government of India has introduced a scheme for simplifying the issue of life certificates for pensioners through an online service through the website www.jeevanpramaan.gov.in.
However there are many clones of “Jeevan Praman” that have come online and pensioners have to be wary of them. They may either be an unfair exploitation of pensioners or a major scam.
Look at the following two web pages.
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The one on the left side is the Government website and the second on the right side belongs to some Noida organization which uses the domain name jeevanpraman.online and the same pictures used by the Government website. It offers similar service but at a price.
This service involves providing aadhaar number and uses face recognition so that vital biometrics have to be provided for using the services offered. Most customers would do so thinking that this is a Government website.
This underscores the responsibility of organizations to guard against a “Confusingly similar Website” operating in violation of trademark rights and causing a potential fraud risk to the community.
Not taking remedial action to bring down such sites could be an abetment of any crime that may be committed by the alternate website using the similar domain name.
We recall the case of www.cgtmse-govt.in which was a fraudulent website which impersonated www.cgtmse.in which belonged to the Government. This fraud was brought to the notice of the public in 2013 but no action was taken by the authorities till in 2016 an adjudicator of Chattisgarh gave an award of compensation in a fraud case.
While it is open for any private sector company to offer a service to enable a citizen to make use of the Government service and also charge a reasonable fee, there should be clear indications that the company is not to be confused with the Government department.
A mere disclaimer at the bottom of the page that stating “Please be informed that this site serves content solely for knowledge purposes and is not affiliated with any pension agency or state institution. Your interaction with this site is subject to our terms of services, privacy, refunds and grievance policy. “For any questions, please email us at info@jeevanpraman.online.” in small print is not sufficient.
It should carry a bold visible mark “This is not a Government Website” or something similar.
Naavi introduced the service under “lookalikes.in” precisely for this purpose where a third party certified disclaimer can be visibly posted on the website.
This system will be effective if both websites post that he information that they are not related to the other. At present the other companies who are using the “Naavi” in their domain names have not yet posted the disclaimers on their websites.
I hope that such disclaimers are an obligation to the society and is a measure to ensure that regulatory authorities donot confuse one for the other.
It is time that such disclaimers are made part of the “Due Diligence” under Section 79 of ITA 2000.
Naavi
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