Truecaller is invading the privacy of Indians, says investigative financial research group.
Truecaller, the world’s largest phone directory app and India’s most downloaded mobile app of all time, has been under fire in recent weeks as an investigative financial research group has accused them of invading the privacy of Indians by collecting a lot more information than what is necessary to connect caller ID to names. This type of data collection, the group says, is against the law and they have threatened legal action against the company if they don’t fix their practices soon. We’ll tell you more about this story in today’s Finshots.
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Introduction
We explain to you why a financial research group believes Truecaller is invading the privacy of Indians in today’s Finshots.
Truecaller helps with spam calls, weeding out companies trying to sell you credit cards, insurance policies, and investment opportunities. The app is handy given India’s place as the spam capital of Asia.
However, Viceroy Research remains skeptical about Truecaller’s endeavor to root out India’s spam calls. It’s a research firm releasing reports on publicly traded companies and its primary goal is to find unsound companies with suspicious financials to bet against for a profit. And the latest move in the process is the company Truecaller. In an explosive story headlined Truecaller’s True Colors, they took apart their business model in order.
At present, Truecaller is not on the Indian stock market. Actually, Truecaller is listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm Exchange. However, Truecaller is the main earner from our market, generating over 70% of its revenues in the region, and a recent report has detailed its transgressions against Indian customers.
It does carry some importance considering Viceroy has previously detailed the €2 Billion accounting scandal at Wirecard.
It could be argued that the concept of privacy doesn’t really exist in the first place, with how much of our data we hand over on a whim. It’s important to understand, though, that this may not apply to you if you have not actually agreed to hand over your personal information to a third party. In that case, companies will still be able to profit from any data that they were able to find, without needing explicit consent from you.
Well, there is the claim against Truecaller. As an example, let’s say we take a look at the way Truecaller accumulates its vast database of users. Once someone installs the app, Truecaller seeks permission to access their phonebook. When you first use Truecaller, the app collects a list of your contacts automatically by scanning the phonebook. This can even include those people you have never spoken to if their information is in the phonebook and if you haven’t had a chance to log into Truecaller before. Now you’re in their database, even though you never intended to, just because you were on their contact list. Apparently, Truecaller gave away your privacy rights without your knowledge.
Google’s Play Store allows this kind of blatant invasion of privacy, you ask.
No, it doesn’t. It prevents apps from publishing a person’s contact information if they haven’t given consent.
There are a couple of tricks Truecaller uses.
As well as pre-installing the app on Android phones, it also encourages people to sign up via a web browser. Bypassing Play Store policies is possible in both cases.
What is the end result?
It has only 300 million monthly active users, but 5.7 billion contacts in its database!
There’s more to it than that.
When The Caravan looked into Truecaller’s business practices a few months ago, it found that a feature called ‘Enhanced Search’ was automatically checked every time a mobile phone came pre-installed with the app.
Truecaller states “By enabling Enhanced Search, your contacts are securely shared with Truecaller.” That means users automatically share their names, numbers, and emails with Truecaller.
“This is factually incorrect – Enhanced Search is never auto-checked and is consent-driven, regardless of where the app is downloaded.” Truecaller responded. However, Viceroy Research investigated this claim and found that this feature was automatically checked on the Indian signup screen until 28th September.
Conclusion
Now Truecaller denies these allegations. Nevertheless, in light of the damning Viceroy report, it remains to be seen whether Truecaller does everything in its power to assure users.
In the meantime, After you learn something new, tell all your friends. Please share this story on WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
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