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TrueCaller built a billion-dollar caller ID data empire in India
- Brajeshwar 5y agoI believe, Truecaller is an auto opt-in and you have to manually opt out if you want your number not be listed. I had to "unlist" my number manually. Check if your number is already in and then unlist at https://www.truecaller.com/unlisting https://www.truecaller.com/unlisting
- gruez 5y ago>Check if your number is already in How do you check whether your number is "in"?
- criddell 5y agoEnter your phone number on this page: https://www.truecaller.com/ https://www.truecaller.com/ Once you do, you have to log in with either your Google or Microsoft identity and agree to let them download your contacts.
- rhacker 5y agoOne piece of legislation that I wish would exist is a universal opt-out requirement with no contracts. Many times you want to "opt-out" of something they require you to create an account or agree to something. Since they have already done an action without your consent or agreements they should be able to remove you permanently without requiring you to agree to anything, signing up or mailing crap.
- martin_a 5y agoYou must be joking. You are joking? Aren't you?!?
- Brajeshwar 5y agoI'm sorry; I didn't realize they need you to login to check that now. Earlier you can check any number.
- CyberShadow 5y agoThank you for posting that link. The last time I checked, they were asking to install their app and then unlist yourself from there.
- jbverschoor 5y agoWell now they want you to sign in with google/microsoft. Never gonna do that. I should create a few dozen fake accounts for these kind of companies.
- CyberShadow 5y agoIndeed. You may also want to buy a bunch of (preferably pre-activated) SIM cards, as registering such accounts will require a phone number, and they limit the number of accounts that can be created with one phone number.
- happylion0801 5y agoThere is no such thing as unlisting a number, atleast last time we tried multiple times but it still keeps showing up
- jabl 5y agoIIRC when looking into this some time ago, if someone who has your number uses truecaller then your number will reappear. So depending on your level of paranoia you might want to regularly check that unlisting page.
- rootsu 5y agoI have tried this for both of my numbers and it has worked quite well. May be you need to try it one more time?
- malfist 5y agoI just tried to put my phone number through it and it gave no indication of success or failure. Pulled up the debugger and see that it gives a 400 exception of "ProfileNotDeactivated" when I submit my number. Seems seriously shady.
- Brajeshwar 5y agoI have had many experiences where I tried to order tea at a small tea-stalls (digitally empowered) on the streets of India, and first thing they ask is my phone number! I reject anyone asking my phone number unless dire and a must-one. I also noticed that almost everyone will blurt out their number when anyone ask them.
- rootusrootus 5y agoSome businesses do exactly the same thing in the US. It is fascinating to be a bystander and hear how willing most people are to just give over their phone number. And of course, not just the store could be recording it, anybody within earshot could.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoMost people do it to get a discount, or convenience of some sort such as a text when your food order is ready for pickup.
- rootusrootus 5y agoMany times, yes. But even places like great clips do it, and they're not giving discounts. At best, they might send you ads that give you coupons you could have gotten anyway. Always worth remembering, in any case, that someone always registers <your-area-code>-867-5309. Use that to get discounts wherever, like Safeway. I remain a little surprised they didn't long ago put that number pattern on a blacklist.
- nmridul 5y agoLast two years, maany shops and malls started collecting names and phone numbers of visitors in the guise of COVID xontact tracking
- GekkePrutser 5y agoBut do people still put up with this? Here I haven't seen this for a long time.
- fareesh 5y agoWhen you install the app they steal your contact list and populate their database that way. Most people are unaware of this, or don't care since we are a third world country and privacy is seen as a first world problem. The vast majority of thinking here is not very sophisticated about these types of topics. Only a very tiny fraction of the total population is averse to sharing personal information like phone numbers. It's common to see folks post their tax ID numbers etc on public forums, tweets, etc. too. For a number of years it was quite common for folks in the lowest income brackets to change their phone numbers quite often because of rampant competition between mobile network providers. The "Mobile Number Portability" system was eventually introduced that minimized this to a large degree. Eventually the competition subsided and this reduced significantly to a point where it's not very common anymore per my understanding. When I need to use Trucaller I use it via their web interface exclusively with a google account that has 0 contacts for them to steal. I remember finding my number listed many years ago as my name with (web developer) in parenthesis, likely stolen from some old customer of mine.
- bongoman37 5y ago
- inglor 5y agoMy wife installed TrueCaller on her phone. She is technical but not a developer. I asked if she knows they steal your contact list and spy on you and her answer was “so? It’s just phone numbers and names and they need to get the data somewhere as they are providing the service for free” I live in a developed country and we have a high standard of living. Giving this anecdote to illustrate many people genuinely don’t see TrueCaller’s spying as a big deal. This is unfortunate but it’s how things often are.
- digitallyfree 5y agoHonestly it's the same thing with the (well-educated) people who have their entire lives on the Google cloud and don't have an issue with the privacy practices of Facebook and Tiktok. They know the companies use their data and they don't mind or care - all they want are their free services. To them features/functionality/cost is first, and privacy is an afterthought. I see this view in a lot of people nowadays.
- compsciphd 5y agotrue caller's dumping of one's contact list is no different what facebook did (and does, though now does with a bit more transparency than in the app's earlier days)
- reaperducer 5y agotrue caller's dumping of one's contact list is no different what facebook did I don't see anyone in this discussion saying that what Facebook did was OK. Or is that the point that you're making? Because one person stole a car, it's OK for everyone else to steal cars, too?
- compsciphd 5y agono. I'm still pissed off at facebook for doing that, and I tried at one point to convince a class action firm that deals in privacy related things to take it up as a case. I'd like if people who are upset at truecaller for this, aim some of their ire at facebook.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y agooh boy. this is interesting. back in 2011. i had "heard" about this. i had an iphone 3GS and an iphone 2G at the time. the 3GS had gotten ios5 if i remember correctly. installing the app, it asked me very strangely to "allow truecaller to access your contacts". it took me a few moments to decide no. at the time, IOS had a "parental setting" to hide permissions behind a separate password, like location, contacts, payments, gallery, web, yada yada. i learned that truecaller works on "you give your contacts and in exchange we give you a one way access to just search for numbers with names and not the other way around. over time, it became ubiquitous, with people relying on it because "who saves a contact". now its an obnoxious app that comes preinstalled on all cheap custom roms, shows full page ads every time it displays on screen after a call, it even shows up AFTER you have disabled screen overlays, i assume it gets preferential treatment by these rom makers, this is the reason why i have never signed up to whatsapp or given facebook any contacts access or even 2fa ( old fb account, not logged in 3 years) fuck truecaller
- zerop 5y agoAdvantage it brought to me is that I can know if caller is spam and ignore/block the call. TrueCaller added value there.
- rootusrootus 5y agoI just assume every call not from a contact is spam and let them go to voicemail. It's even a built-in feature of the phone. That's the world we seem to live in now, where the POTS network has been thoroughly corrupted by the mere existence of SIP.
- wara23arish 5y agoIs true caller any different than an automated yellow pages?
- CyberShadow 5y agoIf I give you my phone number, and you have True Caller installed and save my number to your contacts, I unknowingly and unconsensually also give my phone number to True Caller and essentially the entire world.
- wara23arish 5y agoAren’t yellow pages also adding everybody’s number without consent? I didn’t grow up with them so I might be wrong.
- jeffbee 5y agoIt was the white pages but yes. That's why there is such a yawning gap between reality, where nobody gives a fuck if you know my phone number, and niche online privacy activism, where for some reason people care a lot.
- Nextgrid 5y agoIt's done by your phone company and they're supposed to let you know and allow you to opt-out.
- rootusrootus 5y agoFor one, yellow pages was centrally managed by the phone company you were a customer of, and opt-in (you may be thinking of the white pages for residential customers, which was opt-out). Also, the information in the white/yellow pages is curated and just the name provided by the customer. TrueCaller gets every tidbit of information that your contacts decide to use to annotate your number. Many people use more in the description than just your name.
- wara23arish 5y ago
- happylion0801 5y agoIndias privacy laws are truly lacking. I am surprised that the government hasn’t enacted any laws for this yet. I have a number of stories for this. Indians are so used to this that sometimes people are shocked when I say no to sharing information that they request. For example in a startup, the HR reached out on WhatsApp to all employees in a group and asked for certain documents and information etc. About Truecaller: - It’s default opt in (with almost no way to opt out*) - It requires access to your entire contact list - to mitigate this, I request Apple and Google to implement folders for contacts or something similar to how you can limit access to all photos on iOS per app. That way you can create an empty folder and share it with Truecaller - It’s also impossible to change the wrong data that Truecaller somehow gets from some other contact list My sibling recently got a new number and Truecaller assumed some other name and identity. Fellow Indians believe Truecaller more than they believe the person they are talking to (shows how much spam gets passed around) This is NOT just TrueCaller. The same thing happens with Paytm and other payment apps. Paytm for example assumed another identity and they requested us to submit multiple docs to prove our identity even though we never used the platform before. Even after multiple attempts and submitting multiple ids they refuse to change the data
- redtriumph 5y agoIn India, privacy is always secondary. I remember, last time I was at jewelry shop in Western MH, I had to provide PAN card or Aadhar card since purchase warranted this check. W/o even thinking, folks in my family forwarded those details on Whatsapp.
- nindalf 5y agoPAN Card - Tax identification Aadhaar - “Universal” identifier. Needed for pretty much anything. Including, apparently, buying jewellery.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoSo if you're a tourist you can't buy anything? Weird. Spain has a similar thing for this, you have to give your NIE/DNIe number everywhere. Like when ordering something online. But not in brick and mortar shops. Still I find it a very poor practice in terms of privacy.
- mikeyouse 5y agoAn interesting side effect of these types of companies popped up during the Navalny team's investigation of Putin's alleged yacht in Italy. They got the ship's crew manifest and then used a database like TrueCaller to check it out. The manifest had the crewmember's name and a phone number - so when you look up the number associated with 'Alexander Pechurkin', other people have him listed as "Sanya FSB" "Alexander FSO" and "Alexander Graceful Procurement". [FSB = Russian security services, FSO ~= secret service, 'Graceful' = Putin's previous yacht]. Pretty interesting work history and descriptions for a Boatswain's mate in Italy. https://youtu.be/WyYp9xPLa8s?t=423 https://youtu.be/WyYp9xPLa8s?t=423 These lists must be a gold mine for intelligence agencies.
- rsync 5y agoAnyone can do this. Ekata reverse phone is a plugin inside the twilio plugins directory (or whatever they are calling it this week). I wrote a unix command named 'lookup' which takes a single argument (phone number) and spits out "associated people" in a nice yaml output: "is_commercial": false, "associated_people": [ { "name": "Ms. Amanda Joy Lastname", "firstname": "Amanda", "middlename": "Joy", "lastname": "Lastname", "relation": "Household", "id": "Person.02884d55-980e-450c-a1e2-99999999999b" }, I haven't checked but I'll bet I could get API service (for a fee) from Ekata and query these person IDs they are using and then fill out a whole social graph. It's a neat trick but other than confirming mobile=true and carrier: "carrier": { "mobile_country_code": "311", "mobile_network_code": "489", "name": "Verizon Wireless", "type": "mobile", "error_code": null ... I haven't found much use for it.
- marcolussetti 5y agoThat is really cool! Is this something that's open sourced by any chance?
- superasn 5y agoThe best way to run truecaller is to install this app called 'Island'. This creates a new profile called work profile for you. Use a new google id for this work profile. Then install true caller inside island. I rarely use it but all I have to do is turn on the work profile, look up a number and then turn it back off. I keep all crap apps in the work profile since there is a shortcut in the android drawer to turn it off and on in 1 click. I also assume it saves a bit of battery since these apps can't drain it while work profile is off.
- yashg 5y agoI find TrueCaller immensely useful. Especially to filter out and block spam callers. Spam calls and robocalls are a HUGE problem in India. TrueCaller flashes spam callers in red, you can reject the call and save a few precious minutes of your life. About half of the calls I receive a day are spam calls. If I were to answer them all and then reject it would be a waste of time and energy.
- oh_sigh 5y agoIt's heartening to know that it isn't just Americans whose phones are overrun by Indian spam callers.
- yashg 5y agoMost of these are not scammers trying to scare in the name of tax authorities or IT support scammers. They are mostly tele-callers trying to sell property, insurance, loans, credit cards and such. Nuisance nonetheless.
- throwaway158497 5y agoA cabinet minister (secretary in US administration) got a call like this out of the blue. That is when the India govt work up to the problem. Nothing was done so far though,
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- LinAGKar 5y agoI used to use Truecaller, and it is useful, but it got gradually more and more obnoxious over the years, until eventually it would nag you about paid subscriptions whenever you opened the app, and throw up fullscreen ads whenever you received a phone call. So at that point I uninstalled it.
- carvan222 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lnxg33k1 5y agoI think this shows limit of GDPR which maybe could be improved by making companies your data is shared with, seek authorization to treat those data directly, maybe let's say you sign up on $ocial network which share your data with mark€ting company, then maybe mark€ting has to send you an email to be authorized? So that Truecalled can get numbers from contacts list, but can't use them if not authorized?
- quxpar 5y agoAmericans have avoided this problem by making the overwhelming majority of phone calls spam, so any call not from an existing contact is ignored.
- oh_sigh 5y agoI would love if that were the case, but I don't see how workable it is because caller id is spoofable, and people commonly need to pick up calls from local unknown numbers like doctors offices, mechanic, etc whose number you may not have(or who may call from a whole bank of numbers). The best bet is to try to get a phone number from across the country. If you live in NY, get a phone number from a city you have no relation to, say Seattle. Then, anyone calling from Seattle is almost certainly spam and you can still pick up 212 or 646 numbers.
- withinboredom 5y agoI did this by accident. Best bit of advice you can give, honestly. Most people don’t know that if you actually make friends with they guy/gal setting up your account (and not doing it online), you can literally choose your phone number. My phone number spells my (very popular) first name and is from an obscure part of the US. Any phone calls from there is spam. That being said, bots tend to use that prefix for spam, in general and for a few years there, I got a lot texts and calls: “missed call from this number, who dis” and “I don’t want your warranty” type of things. That was annoying.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- freebuju 5y agoTruecaller is massively popular in my country as well. Before I knew any better, I was ignorant of the permissions and saw it as a worthy trade-off since my contact(s) will somehow end up there, if they weren't already. As all it takes is for someone else who has saved my number to download the app and give it permission. Didn't give them much thought until I started seeing them buy advertisement spots in some of the local daily newspapers. They were getting greedy for more data. From that moment, I deleted my account and created a new account signed in only with a random Microsoft login and the app now lives in the work profile where there are no contacts. The app will refuse to work until you grant it permission to make calls (read your IMEI pre-Android 10) and obviously read contacts permission. It is also quite intrusive. Coincidentally, the other app I found employing such dirty tactics by refusing to launch at all before being granted sensitive permissions is Whatsapp.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bongoman37 5y ago
- rootusrootus 5y agoIt is genius, really. Evil, but genius. Even just getting a reliable name for every number would be handy, I can see the value. But the killer feature is how much information your contacts leak in their description of you, so all of that can be correlated to build a more detailed picture of you.
- geodel 5y agoI am sure someone can build a truly privacy respecting service like true caller and billion plus phone users in India would just sign up for it for something like Rs 100 a month or would they? It is astounding that common person understands the tradeoff when using free service but these ignoramus critics do not.
- rootusrootus 5y agoNobody really wants to pay for services, ever. We have trained them that everyone ought to be free. And the evil genius of truecaller is that you're not being asked to give up your own privacy, you are just giving up your friends'. And of course that comes right back around to you because if just one of your friends feels the same way, you're in the database too.
- asteroidp 5y agoI am assuming it has plenty of cell spoofing tech in there too
- Marwari 5y agoWas home few days back. Someone needed PAN details from Papa, he shared PAN, Aadhar and all other documents with other person on WhatsApp; including things he didn't ask for. People don't know privacy and not aware of misuses in India. And phone number in India is not considered private info. We keep putting banner with number everywhere offline to online.
- nitn 5y ago> Truecaller’s database that includes users who did not register and did not give consent to having their numbers identified. That's the problem with maintaining absolute privacy. The privacy and security of your information depends on other people even if you do everything to save it.
- RealCodingOtaku 5y agoMany in the comment section told that they are using TrueCaller to avoid spam/robot calls. In my personal experience, I found that not creating a TrueCaller account itself avoids having spam calls. I tried this by getting a new number years ago. I do get some spams, but from some services that I am using/has used a few months ago, and they want me to get back in (looking at you, ACT fibernet). Anyway, it's okay to not use such an app for blocking contacts, most modern smartphones has blocking functionality, and some Free/Libre apps has ways to block a number range and works offline without ads. They are more than sufficient for most of us, use them instead. But as the article said, not having proper legislation is the root cause of this problem, from how many services running in India can you delete your account (not unsubscribe/delete app, but delete “account” with personal information) from? Yeah, think about it.
- stillblue 5y agoTruecaller was a royal PITA when it came to privacy until I figured out how to fuck with the system. 1. Anyone that has your phone number and Truecaller automatically gets you a name:phone_number entry in the Truecaller database. To get around this, I created a Truecaller account using my own phone number on a phone with zero contacts and gave myself a fake name(with my choice of subtle cuss words). This takes priority over other entries in the database. Am not sure if it works that way anymore. 2. Anytime I need to look up a number, I sign in using a dummy gmail account that I have. There were a good few years where people looked up my number on Truecaller and it showed up a very obscene name that would shock em. I hate Truecaller so much!
- dynomer 5y ago[dead]