Legal experts warn that Truecaller is probably breaking South Africa’s privacy laws

rvZA said:
Well just installed it on my device. I clicked the upgrade option and a message popped up that my carrier does not support the features and that I should try their other premium options. Only the blue and gold option is now left and the Upgrade button is greyd out and cannot be clicked.

Over and above that, just noticed that Truecaller now rejects all incoming calls of both people in my contacts and those not.

Uninstalled the app as I believe carriers are now taking actions against it and I have to be able to receive calls again. Maybe it will work for others, but it does not work for me.
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can you show a screenshot of this message?

I am trying to understand how the "carrier" must support it. On my phone, spam calls just ring silently and I dont know about it. Thats not a carrier function, but a function of my device.
 
rvZA said:
Well just installed it on my device. I clicked the upgrade option and a message popped up that my carrier does not support the features and that I should try their other premium options. Only the blue and gold option is now left and the Upgrade button is greyd out and cannot be clicked.

Over and above that, just noticed that Truecaller now rejects all incoming calls of both people in my contacts and those not.

Uninstalled the app as I believe carriers are now taking actions against it and I have to be able to receive calls again. Maybe it will work for others, but it does not work for me.
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Well given that I'm on Telkom, and use Truecaller and have just upgraded to Premium without any issue its not a Telkom issue but a PEBKAC issue.

As for the "carriers taking action" crap, that is your standard totally divorced from reality bollocks.
 
Don't shoot the messenger. Is TC breaking POPIA? Probably. The issue is that there's no way to control who's details get shared so everyone you add to your contact list is known. A mitigating factor may be that it's most probably nicknames and not real information.

As for TC I only use it from the web under a fake email to check on the occasional spam I get. Nationaloptout has worked for me and tremendously cut down on the spam I got after a few months.
 
emperornemesis said:
I tried that, got more spam. The idiots that spam you are not the people who care about the list, so they subscribe to get a list, and then happily go about their business. I've tried everything and the only thing that seems to work, is to forward their calls to the 0800 11 12 13 number for the police. Apparently the police don't like being bothered, so just a few threats from the police and my spam is already reduced.
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Weird got much less here. I just renew it every 3 years.
 
Whaahaaa, step one, stop the spam and unsolicited criminal calls...should I carry on
 
Tinuva said:
can you show a screenshot of this message?

I am trying to understand how the "carrier" must support it. On my phone, spam calls just ring silently and I dont know about it. Thats not a carrier function, but a function of my device.
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Okay, sorry my mistake. It is with their top package, which include the Assistant. Telkom does not support it and I cannot purchase that subscription.

1.jpg

The only bummer is, if you choose this option, you can no longer sign up for any other premium package.

2.jpg

The Upgrade Now button or link is light blue and cannot be clicked.

But, you can bypass this by uninstalling the app, reinstalling it and then chosing the smaller packages. But, even paying, for some reason all calls coming in is now rejected by truecaller and I cannot seem to stop that,
 
I occasionally use TC to look up a number but these days I can recognise Old Mutual's number... because it's always Old Mutual.
 
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rvZA said:
Okay, sorry my mistake. It is with their top package, which include the Assistant. Telkom does not support it and I cannot purchase that subscription.

View attachment 1728659

The only bummer is, if you choose this option, you can no longer sign up for any other premium package.

View attachment 1728661

The Upgrade Now button or link is light blue and cannot be clicked.

But, you can bypass this by uninstalling the app, reinstalling it and then chosing the smaller packages. But, even paying, for some reason all calls coming in is now rejected by truecaller and I cannot seem to stop that,
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That most expensive option.. Is helluva expansive though. Unsure why you would pick that over the regular premium option.
 
Tinuva said:
That most expensive option.. Is helluva expansive though. Unsure why you would pick that over the regular premium option.
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Just over R300 a year is not a lot of money considering what you get - the Assistant feature, call recording. But, yeah, it is what it is, Nonetheless, something is wrong with the app as it keeps rejecting all calls when I set it as my default phone.
 
backstreetboy said:
https://www.nationaloptout.org/ and https://dnc.org.za/ works fine for me. Got the spam down to acceptable levels. Porting to one of the new Megsapp, Melon or Afrihost Air Mobile number ranges that's not recycled numbers should cut it down even more.
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The only problem is that those also blocked stuff I didn't want blocked:
For instance
 
Considering I think it should be illegal to hide your phone number or identity when you call someone (anyone who doesn't want the person they're calling to know who they are is clearly doing something immoral or illegal) I say sucks to POPIA on this....Truecaller is just doing what ICASA should be in terms of preventing spam and scam calling.

If I had my way, the option to hide your number should not exist on any phone. I do not answer any calls, ever, from "private" numbers. No-one should.
 
Confirmed. Truecaller does not work at all on my new Samsung S23 and Telkom. Over and the above the fact that most big features are not supported by Telkom, for some reason, by default the app rejects all incoming calls. There are no way to allow incoming calls to my device.

A shame, but then again, Samsung's default spam detection works for me and I just keep adding new numbers as they call me.
 
Considering most of the calls I get are from companies breaking South Africa's privacy laws, I really don't care.
 
mylesillidge said:
Truecaller warning in South Africa

Truecaller says it does not want to speculate on the personal opinions of specialist regulatory lawyers who say that it was likely violating South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (Popia).

“Every individual has an inherent fundamental right to know who is calling them, and we enable our users to exercise it,” a Truecaller spokesperson told MyBroadband.
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Were these Experts paid-for by iWyze Insurance or King Price Insurance?
 
Have premium. Even if they increase the subscription with R20 I will gladly pay it. Calls for debt collectors for other people gets a lot sometimes, especially when you are busy and the call interrupts you. There has been false positives though but they are few and far between.
backstreetboy said:
https://www.nationaloptout.org/ and https://dnc.org.za/ works fine for me.
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This has not helped at all. This only applies to companies registered to them. Most of these spam callers are not.
 
G.A.S said:
The only problem is that those also blocked stuff I didn't want blocked:
For instance
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How so? It's an opt-in database where they simply deregister any numbers on their own database. Companies should still send you OTPs and other important communications. It doesn't 'block' anything.
 
G.A.S said:
The only problem is that those also blocked stuff I didn't want blocked:
For instance
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Not sure what the problem is but on my Truecaller App I can unblock and I can set numbers to "never block" and I can also view the messages that were blocked in a seperate folder... Does none of those options work at all?
 
Johand said:
Not sure what the problem is but on my Truecaller App I can unblock and I can set numbers to "never block" and I can also view the messages that were blocked in a seperate folder... Does none of those options work at all?
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There is something else we should understand. Some people will just not like the app and complain it has issue x or y or z.At the end of the day, doesn't really matter if someone else doesn't find the same good use as we do out of this app.

For example, I get my courier guy delivery otps just fine. Never had to unblock it, it just works fine with this app.

If I one day get a newer phone and find some stuff not working, I will definitely go complain with the app developers instead of here on MyBB. Because that is how you get issues fixed. I am not saying they don't have these issues, but from earlier posts, sounds like specific phones with specific custom versions of android may have issues specific to that phone. Only the app developers however, can fix it.
 
Swa said:
How so? It's an opt-in database where they simply deregister any numbers on their own database. Companies should still send you OTPs and other important communications. It doesn't 'block' anything.
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I can merely say what happened and when it started to work again... (and I'm not the only one, see the linked thread)
 
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