Information Regulator receives complaint about Truecaller

Sinbad said:
This complaint is valid and truecaller is on dangerous ground.

I am not a truecaller user.

However, if any truecaller user has my contact details in their address book, that information is shared with Truecaller without my consent which I'm sure is illegal - and also opens me up to data breaches in an organisation that I have no contract or association with.
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Is that you "This is an important consumer announcement" - guy?
 
Jan said:
And even then, I'm pretty sure the iOS app can only access your contacts. They don't upload otherwise they'd run afoul of App Store policies.
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A few years back somebody got hold of a work number I did not share widely for personal security reasons. Querying it, he found it on WhatsApp. At the time I contacted Truecaller and they blamed the user they got it from. However, they were good enough to remove it with 24 hrs and it has not re-appeared (might be because I promised to nuke them if it did :P). I also looked at WhatsApp terms at the time, sure enough, they scrape a user's contact data and share it.

The terms have since been changed, but we can still see the older wording on the Wayback machine:

Truecaller

Truecaller is transforming today’s phonebook to make it more intelligent and useful.
web.archive.org web.archive.org
You further agree and guarantee that, if You have opted in to participate in the Enhanced Search functionality, we may collect, use and share certain information regarding the contacts contained in Your device’s phone book (“Contact Information”) with other Users in accordance with the Truecaller Privacy Policy in order to provide the Services. By allowing Contact Information to be collected, You give Truecaller a right to use that Contact Information as a part of the Service and you guarantee that you have any and all permissions required to share such Contact Information with us. You may opt-out to prevent the sharing of Contact Information at any time.
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I only share contacts with Truecaller I have named as P03$. In fact, I go on Truecaller just to "update" those numbers with the correct name of P03$.
 
dontcryforme said:
I only share contacts with Truecaller I have named as P03$. In fact, I go on Truecaller just to "update" those numbers with the correct name of P03$.
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I'm a little bit more blunt in my naming on Truecaller.

Do have to wonder if anyone else ever sees the name and has a small hernia about their phone swearing at them :P
 
ToxicBunny said:
I'm a little bit more blunt in my naming on Truecaller.

Do have to wonder if anyone else ever sees the name and has a small hernia about their phone swearing at them :p
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And those with phones saying the contact name: "P03$ (correctly spelled) is calling." "P03$ is calling!" for everyone to hear
 
bwana said:
With the right kind of support and compassion, you'll get over it.
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Sometimes a data leak can have have serious consequences in one of the world's murder capitals. depending on a personal situation where not even cops are safe and get gunned down, unless they're taking bribes. Then there are the other bad ones, the real bad ones. Oh - and of course South Africa's cyber security policies are virtually non-existent ... let's make some new cyber laws that we'll never enforce.

And all this because some doofus narcissist does not respect the next person's privacy or does not check what he's using.

And for the trolls - no I don't sell anything or blindly call people.
 
bwana said:
You can unlist your number.

www.truecaller.com

Unlist phone number

Truecaller is the leading global platform for verifying contacts and blocking unwanted communication.
www.truecaller.com www.truecaller.com
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Sure, but you have to subscribe to Truecaller first. And then it shares your information. It's a catch 22 that requires everybody to be subscribed to Truecaller before everybody can unlist their number. If money was involved, that would be extortion.
 
Cosmik Debris said:
Sure, but you have to subscribe to Truecaller first. And then it shares your information. It's a catch 22 that requires everybody to be subscribed to Truecaller before everybody can unlist their number. If money was involved, that would be extortion.
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You can sign up using email. No name, no number, no cowering in the corner every time an unknown number comes up on your phone.
 
This might all be my fault. In the thread about the other previous article that no one has complained to Regulator about TrueCaller, there was a poster that was going on about TrueCaller being bad, so I asked him why he hasn't logged a complaint about it with the Regulator...
 
  • Haha
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