Mobile App "True Caller" - "Good or Bad"

This blog is about a mobile App “True caller”, which is available for download in various mobile OS platforms and phones including - iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows, Nokia phones etc.

I am an Android user so here I would be showing it’s progress in Android platform and will accordingly share my personal opinions, which you could choose to use or not!

Truecaller_Android Play Store_Homepage

Few of my friends suggested me to use it; on the contrary few even suggested not to try using it. Everyone has their own reason and explanation, so I decided to explore it on my own.

Well, let’s start with what this mobile app is all about. If you go the description of this app or visit the website, it claims to provide you details of each and every phone number across the globe, like country the phone number belongs to, or who is owner of the number, pic of the person, Facebook profile of the person, etc; as long as that number exists in their database. They claim to keep updating their database on a regular basis, unlikely most other manufactures of similar types of mobile apps. Maybe, that could also be seen as a very big reason for their huge success this moment.

Truecaller_Rating

There are many more advanced features this app provides, which make it more user-friendly and helpful to get more active users. If we look at the graph on the right side, we can easily understand how successful this app is.

Let me walk you through few basic feature of the app:

If you have Truecaller installed on your phone, all you need is to dial a number, the app will show you the name of the person associated with that number, which would help you in determining the owners of any unknown number calls that you receive on your mobile. This feature helps you when you get a call from any unknown number, which is not in your contacts list, as it brings up the name of person calling you.

For new Smartphone users, that’s more like magic as they can see name & details of any unknown number. However, the question that arises here is how does Truecaller get that number in their database?

Are they getting the details of any number from the respective telecom providers in each country? That seems impossible, because no telecom provider is authorized to reveal customer data or identity to any third party.

Then how are they able to pull of this magic?

Let’s have a look at the image below, which is screenshot of permission access mentioned on Truecaller Android app page.

Truecaller_permissions

If you read all these permissions, you can see that the 4^th and 5^th points mention that when you use the app it reads and writes the entire contacts from your contact book of your mobile and saves it to their database. Here is the catch!

Now, if I am installing this app definitely my contact book is not just my private entity anymore. It is there on the Truecaller database, and whenever any person will search for any number that is present in my contact list using the Truecaller directory, it will be show up with the name I saved against that contact number in my contact book.

Just an example, if I saved my girlfriend’s number 123456789 with name “My Love” in my contact book and having True caller installed in my phone, and at the same time if you are using True caller but you don’t have my girlfriend’s phone number in your contact list, and you dial the same number; it would be showing the name “my love” when you dial her number.

Vice-versa I would definitely hate if I call any unknown number and it displays  any relationship or funny name. Because usually people do keep phone numbers with nick names in their contact book.

So to summarize, if you love your contact book and wants to keep it private to you, I would recommend “NOT to use Truecaller” at all.

But, if you don’t mind making your contact book public, you can certainly use it. For sure, you also have the option to snatch any other’s contact book also, without actually knowing whom it belongs to, and keep enjoying!

For me, I am concerned to my privacy and love my contact book, so for sure would like to keep it private to me. 

So, my vote on whether to install “Truecaller” is a NO !!