Truecaller is a smartphone application that has features of

caller ID Caller identification (Caller ID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call is ...

, call-blocking, flash-messaging, call-recording (on

Android Android most commonly refers to: *Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), a mobile operating system primarily developed by Google * Android TV, a operating system developed ...

up to version 8),

chat Chat or chats may refer to: Communication * Conversation, particularly casual * Online chat, text message communication over the Internet in real-time * Synchronous conferencing, a formal term for online chat * SMS chat, a form of text messagi ...

and voice by using the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

. It requires users to provide a standard cellular mobile number for registering with the

service Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a ...

. The app is available for Android and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

History

Truecaller is developed by True Software Scandinavia AB, a

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of share capital, stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) co ...

listed in Sweden with a head office in

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

, founded by Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam in 2009, but most of its employees are in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. It was initially launched on

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

and

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...

on 1 July 2009. It was released for

and

Apple iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphone, smartphones developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The iPhone (1st generation), first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and ...

on 23 September 2009, for

BlackBerry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

on 27 February 2012, for

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft Mobile for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design languag ...

on 1 March 2012, and for

Nokia Series 40 Nokia Series 40 Platform, often shortened as S40, is a software platform and application user interface (UI) software that was previously used on Nokia's broad range of mid-tier feature phones from 2002 to 2014, as well as on some of the Vertu l ...

on 3 September 2012. As of September 2012, Truecaller had five million users performing 120 million searches of the

telephone number A telephone number is the address of a Telecommunications, telecommunication endpoint, such as a telephone, in a telephone network, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN). A telephone number typically consists of a Number, sequ ...

database every month. As of 22 January 2013, Truecaller reached 10 million users. As of January 2017, Truecaller had reached 250 million users worldwide. As of 4 February 2020, it crossed 200 million monthly user-base globally, of which 150 million were from India. On 18 September 2012,

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high tech, high-tech and Startup company, startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. I ...

announced that OpenOcean, a

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

fund led by former

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

and

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

executives (including

Michael Widenius Ulf Michael Widenius (born 3 March 1962), also known as Monty, is a Finnish software programmer. He is the main author of the original version of the open source MySQL database, a founding member of the MySQL AB company, founding member of the ...

, founder of MySQL), were investing

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

1.3 million in Truecaller to push Truecaller’s global reach. Truecaller said that it intended to use the new funding to expand its footprint in "key markets"—specifically

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

and the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

. In February 2014, Truecaller received in funding from

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

, alongside existing investor OpenOcean, Truecaller chairman Stefan Lennhammer, and an unnamed private investor. It also announced a partnership with

Yelp Yelp Inc. is an American company that develops the Yelp.com website and the Yelp mobile app, which publishes crowd-sourced reviews about businesses. It also operates Yelp Guest Manager, a table reservation service. It is headquartered in S ...

to use Yelp's

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

data to help identify business numbers when they call a

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

. In October of the same year, they received from

Niklas Zennström Niklas Zennström (; born 16 February 1966) is a Swedish entrepreneur and technology investor. He is co-founder of the charity organization Zennström Philanthropies. Education Zennström attended high school at Katedralskolan, Uppsala. He ha ...

Atomico Atomico is a European Venture Capital firm headquartered in London, with offices in Paris, Berlin and Stockholm. Its founder and CEO is Niklas Zennström, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Skype and Kazaa. History and investments It has ...

investment firm and from

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...

. On 7 July 2015, Truecaller launched its

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

app called TrueMessenger exclusively in India. TrueMessenger enables users to identify the sender of SMS messages. This launch was aimed at increasing the company's user base in India which are the bulk of its active users. TrueMessenger was integrated into the Truecaller app in April 2017. In December 2019, Truecaller announced it plans to go public in an

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in 2022. Truecaller has launched the

Covid Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

Hospital Directory keeping in mind the increasing cases of

corona Corona (from the Latin for 'crown') most commonly refers to: * Stellar corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun or another star * Corona (beer), a Mexican beer * Corona, informal term for the coronavirus or disease responsible for the COVID-19 ...

infection in India. Through this directory, Indian users will get information about the telephone number and address of Covid Hospitals. In January 2025, Truecaller added real-time Caller ID and spam-blocking for

iOS 18 iOS 18 is the eighteenth and current major release of Apple's iOS operating system for the iPhone. It was announced on June 10, 2024, at the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). It was made publicly available on September 16, 2024, as ...

.2 users, functionality previously available to Android phone users.

Competitive and regulatory landscape

Truecaller gets about 75% of its revenue from India. The Indian regulatory body TRAI has a competing service for Caller ID based on CNAP (Caller Name Presentation). This would enable caller ID without the use of any apps. There were small tests done in June/July 2024. If this is rolled out pan India, analysts expect this to substantially impact the usage of Truecaller in India.
Indian data privacy act
which will come into force in later 2024 is also expected to negatively impact Truecaller in India. When this is in force, Truecaller will not be able to collect and use unconsented data which powers their caller ID database. In a lawsuit in Nigeria, Truecaller defended their security and privacy policy stating that the users whose phone books were uploaded by Truecaller are the data controllers and that Truecaller is merely a data processor. This is different from Europe where they dont seem to upload users' phone books as it may run afoul of GDPR. There are now 2 more lawsuits against Truecaller in Nigeria seeking to end Truecaller's unconsented data practices (ONWUBUARIRI vs TRUECALLER INTERNATIONAL LLP and OKAFOR vs TRUECALLER INTERNATIONAL LLP). In Aug/Sep 2024, the Indian regulatory body TRAI starte
cracking down
on tele spammers. They instructed telecom providers to terminate all telecom resources of unregistered tele marketers (UTMs). This enforcement started in late August and is leading to a massive termination of spamming numbers and blacklisting their companies so that they cannot get any phone numbers from any other providers for 2 years. If this is (even partially) successful in disconnecting the top spamming companies, it may lead to a massive reduction in spam calls and thus reducing the number of ads shown by Truecaller. In Feb 2025, IMY (Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten) which is Sweden's GDPR regulator started an investigation/supervision into the data practices of Truecaller. The decision is awaited.

Security and privacy issues

On 17 July 2013, Truecaller servers were allegedly hacked into by the

Syrian Electronic Army The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA; ) was a group of hacker (computer security), computer hackers which first surfaced online in 2011 to support the government of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Using spamming, website defacement, malware, ...

. E Hacking News reported the group identified 7 sensitive databases it claimed to have exfiltrated, primarily due to an unmaintained

WordPress WordPress (WP, or WordPress.org) is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, electronic mailing list, ma ...

installation on the servers. Claims made regarding the size of the databases were inconsistent. On 18 July 2013, Truecaller issued a statement on its

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

stating that their

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

was indeed hacked, but claiming that the attack did not disclose any

passwords A password, sometimes called a passcode, is secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user's identity. Traditionally, passwords were expected to be memorized, but the large number of password-protected services ...

or credit card information. Truecaller uploads users' stored contacts to their servers to form a database of phone numbers. This may violate GDPR and similar regulations in multiple countries. Truecaller also tracks phone calls made by non-users to users (and vice versa) and hence collects information about those non users in detail. These non-users don't have a way to stop this data collection. In November 2019,

-based

security researcher A security hacker or security researcher is someone who explores methods for breaching or bypassing defenses and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, prote ...

Ehraz Ahmed discovered a security flaw that exposed user data as well as system and location information. Truecaller confirmed this information and the bug was immediately fixed. Multiple times in 2020 and 2021, there were reports about a massive Truecaller database leak on the internet. The reports surfaced again in 2024. The leaked database has information regarding users' (and non-users') phone numbers, names, phone carrier, tags, email addresses, etc.

References

External links

* {{Official website} Mobile software Android (operating system) software BlackBerry software iOS software Social networking services Swedish brands Windows Phone software Caller ID Anti-spam

History

Competitive and regulatory landscape

Security and privacy issues

See also

References

External links