Here's why this app knows your name even when you don't use it

The Truecaller application has been a breath of fresh air for many who just want irritating calls and text messages identified and blocked.

Spam calls are increasingly causing distress for mobile phone subscribers.  (Business Daily)

Truecaller application has become a hit among African countries.

The caller-ID and call-blocking app has gained widespread popularity worldwide since it was released in 2009.

The Swedish-owned company behind the service, True Software Scandinavia AB, reports that it now has over three billion telephone numbers in its database and over 100 million Google Play Store downloads for its Android app alone.

The company is currently searching for offices in Africa given its popularity in the continent.

Truecaller's massive adoption in Nigeria could be partly blamed on the Nigerian Communication Commission's lack of willto stop spam callers and messagers in their tracks.

People are now unwilling to pick calls from unknown numbers, as they fear it may be another spam or tele-marketing call from telecom operators.  (Makeuseof)

For those who don’t use the app, have you ever wondered how your telephone number is available on Truecaller despite you not having ever installed the app?

Here’s how it works?

This means that, even if just one person has your contact details on their device address book, without your permission, as soon as they install the Truecaller app your contact details are now part of the global Truecaller database.

Truecaller doesn’t immediately make your contact details, as a non-user, available (but users can search based on your name) but as soon as you call any Truecaller user, the app’s caller ID function will query the database and identify you, thus indirectly “unlocking” your identity.

Truecaller’s Privacy Policy

As part of the Truecaller app’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, you as a user have to give it access to your entire address book, which is in turn added to their global database of people’s contact details. This is called Crowdsourcing.

But this is not the only method by which Truecaller collects people and organizations’ contact details as Ted Nelson, Chief Commercial Officer further explained to iAfrikan.

“We also gather, and organizes phone numbers from different sources including white and yellow pages across the world, and social media channels. Once the information is gathered, Truecaller runs it through different layers of verification (our proprietary algorithms) to make sure that the contact information we organize is accurate.”

Truecaller through various methods is able to integrate to various social media platforms and refine the data it already has uploaded on its contacts database. This can include things such as matching a name to a telephone number, uploading a profile photo, specifying a location, etc.