😱 The End of Truecaller?

Truecaller has helped us all avoid spam calls and awkward conversations. But its service comes at a huge price. Which is exactly why the Indian government is planning to make it redundant. Here's how.

If there's anything that unites all of us it is our universal hatred of spam calls. 

No one wants to be sold a credit card or whatever it is that these callers are selling in the middle of work, or worse, when we are half asleep! 

But our days of going "Hello, kaun? (Hello, who's there?)" are over now, thanks to almost every phone having Truecaller. 

However, Truecaller isn't the great saviour that we think it is. There's a huge catch in its business model. 

But not to worry, it is soon getting a much stronger and safer competitor: the Indian government. 

Wondering what's going on? ReadOn! 

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✊ The Dominance of Truecaller

Truecaller enjoys an undisputed monopoly in India. Despite being a Swedish company, nearly 77%  of its user base, or 235.5 million active users are located here. Out of the SEK 1.12 billion revenue (INR 830 crores) it made last year, India contributed about SEK 787 million (INR 578 crores: almost 70%).

And this makes sense. India is the world's fourth most-spammed country. 

In 2021, one spammer in India alone made over 202 million spam calls! 

So, Truecaller obviously has a huge demand. 

But it turns out Truecaller is exploiting us. Umm, how? 

Ever wondered how Truecaller knows exactly who is calling you? 

Well, it isn't because it went through all the old Yellow Pages (for our dear Gen Z audience: yellow pages was a massive book where the phone numbers of everyone were recorded). 

You see, everytime you download the Truecaller app, you give it access to all your contacts. Now, this has pros and cons. 

Pros: If you have ever been scammed by someone and saved their name as "Scammer" or "Fraud", it automatically informs other users of Truecaller that this number is not to be trusted (This also happens when too many people flag a number). 

Cons: Even if someone on your contact list hasn't downloaded Truecaller, their number is now on Truecaller's database without their permission. In fact, some reports suggest that a majority of the numbers present in its database have been added without consent. 

Now, this may not sound like a big deal to you. After all, we give out our phone numbers to so many people. But there's yet another super high security risk with Truecaller. 

Apparently, the app can read your messages, according to research by Caravan Magazine. 

Yes, even those messages sent from your bank that track how much money has been debited or credited from your account.

This way the company is reportedly trying to build detailed financial profiles of users and then could use its short-term loan facility to send loan offers to users when their bank balance falls below a certain limit. 

And you thought only the Big Tech companies tracked your online activities!

Well, we had highlighted the privacy risks from Truecaller a long time back. 

But Truecaller has denied all of these allegations. 

Nonetheless, the company is running a super hit business in India. And we are partly to blame for this. 

If we had a strong data privacy bill in place, Truecaller wouldn't be able to pull all these tricks. 

But it seems like Truecaller's glory days are now over. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is developing a caller identification service, similar to Truecaller. 

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📱TRAI's Try to Defeat Truecaller

TRAI is trying to build an alternative that is set to be more accurate than Truecaller. How? 

The government is not going to rely on your contact names to identify people. Yes, no more getting calls from someone's "Papa" "Dadi" or a random "Chintu". 

TRAI will tell you exactly who is calling because they will verify contacts using the KYC details that people filled when buying a sim card. 

This means super accurate information. 

So, is Truecaller in trouble? 

Well, maybe not. You see, Truecaller does much more than just show you the name of who is calling. 

It has expanded to include features such as:

1. Call Reason - to tell people why you are calling.

2. Search Engine - to identify callers by providing their phone numbers.

3. Truecaller for Business - to help businesses connect with their customers in a more trusted manner. This feature allows businesses to verify their identity by adding the correct name, brand logo, and a green caller ID. For a monthly call volume of 50,000, the app charges Rs. 15,000-19,500 per month. Right now, it has over 1,000 active business customers across 33 countries.

4. Truecaller Priority Services - to distinguish between 'good' and 'spam' calls. The colour purple is used to signify priority calls by e-commerce, food delivery and other such companies that need our immediate attention. It is also working on an AI-enabled assistance service that will have the ability to answer, filter, and manage calls on the user’s behalf. 

So, for businesses in India and those getting a high volume of daily calls, Truecaller still seems like the preferred option. 

But with a data privacy bill finally coming into the picture, Truecaller may face a lot of difficulties in India in the future. 

So, is this the end of Truecaller? 

This article was researched and written by our intern Navya Gupta.

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⚡In a line: A government-powered Truecaller alternative could finally ensure that our data remains safe. 

💡Quick question: Will you still be using Truecaller after reading these allegations?

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