Truecaller

Truecaller is a smartphone application that has features of caller-identification, call-blocking, flash-messaging, call-recording (on Android up to version 8), Chat & Voice by using the internet. It requires users to provide a standard cellular mobile number for registering with the service. The app is available for Android [1] and iOS [2].

Truecaller
Developer(s)True Software Scandinavia AB
Initial release1 July 2009 (2009-07-01)
Operating systemAndroid and iOS
TypeTelephone directory, caller ID, spam blocker
LicenseFreeware
Websitewww.truecaller.com

History

Truecaller is developed by True Software Scandinavia AB, a privately held company in Stockholm, Sweden founded by Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam in 2009.[3]

It was initially launched on Symbian and Microsoft Windows Mobile on 1 July 2009. It was released for Android and Apple iPhone on 23 September 2009, for RIM Blackberry on 27 February 2012, for Windows Phone on 1 March 2012, and for Nokia Series 40 on 3 September 2012.

As of September 2012 Truecaller had five million users[4] performing 120 million searches of the telephone number database every month.[5] As of 22 January 2013 Truecaller reached 10 million users.[6] As of January 2017 Truecaller had reached 250 million users worldwide.[7] As of 4 February 2020, it crossed 200 million monthly user-base globally, of which 150 million were from India.[8][9]

On 18 September 2012, Techcrunch announced[10] that OpenOcean,[11] a venture capital fund led by former MySQL and Nokia executives (including Michael Widenius,[12] founder of MySQL), were investing US$1.3 million in Truecaller to push Truecaller’s global reach.[13] Truecaller said that it intended to use the new funding to expand its footprint in "key markets"—specifically North America, Asia and the Middle East.[14]

In February 2014, Truecaller received $18.8 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, alongside existing investor OpenOcean, Truecaller chairman Stefan Lennhammer, and an unnamed private investor. It also announced a partnership with Yelp to use Yelp's API data to help identify business numbers when they call a smartphone.[15] In October of the same year, they received $60 million from Niklas Zennstrom's Atomico investment firm and from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.[16]

On 7 July 2015 Truecaller launched its SMS app called Truemessenger exclusively in India. Truemessenger enables users to identify the sender of SMS messages. This launch was aimed at increasing the company's user base in India.[17]

In December 2019, Truecaller announced it plans to go public in an IPO on 2022. [18]

Security and privacy issues

On 17 July 2013, Truecaller servers were allegedly hacked into by the Syrian Electronic Army.[19] The group claimed on its Twitter handle to have recovered 459 GBs of database, primarily due to an older version of WordPress installation on the servers. On 18 July 2013, Truecaller issued a statement on its blog stating that their website was indeed hacked, but claiming that the attack did not disclose any passwords or credit card information.[20]

On 23 November 2019 Indian-based security researcher Ehraz Ahmed discovered a security flaw that exposed user data as well as system and location information. Truecaller confirmed this information and the bug was immediately fixed.[21][22]

References
  1. "Truecaller - Android-apps op Google Play". Retrieved 10 October 2012.
  2. "Truecaller - worldwide number search and spam filter for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad". iTunes App Store. 27 September 2012.
  3. Sredaktion, Dagens P. "About Truecaller".
  4. Rönnklint, Richard (4 September 2012). "Truecaller når 5 miljoner medlemmar" [TrueCaller reaches 5 million members]. AppLovin (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 16 October 2012.
  5. Harald, Patrik (19 September 2012). "Open Ocean investerar i svenska Truecaller" [Open Ocean invests in Swedish TrueCaller] (in Finnish). Forummag.fi.
  6. Meyer, David (22 January 2013). "Big in India, Swedish phone directory service Truecaller hits 20M user milestone". Gigaom.
  7. "Truecaller in 2017". Truecaller Blog. 18 January 2017. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  8. "Truecaller crosses 200 mn monthly user-base globally; ushers in 150 mn Indians". www.livemint.com. 4 February 2020. Retrieved 4 February 2020.
  9. Sheth, Hemani. "Truecaller hits the 200-million mark in monthly active users". @businessline. Retrieved 4 February 2020.
  10. Lomas, Natasha (18 September 2012). "Open Ocean Invests $1.3M To Push Crowdsourced Directory Truecaller's Global Reach". TechCrunch. (TechCrunch was owned by AOL as of 2012). Archived from the original on 20 September 2012. Retrieved 24 July 2017.
  11. "Investor in Community and Open Source Business". Open Ocean Capital. 19 September 2012.
  12. Videla, Emanuel (19 September 2012). "Miljonregn över svenska Truecaller" [Millions rain down on Swedish TrueCaller] (in Swedish). IT24/IDG. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
  13. Clayton, Nick (20 September 2012). "Truecaller Collects $1.3 Million for Crowd-Sourced Phone Book". Tech Europe - Wall Street Journal.
  14. Lomas, Natasha (18 September 2012). "Open Ocean Invests $1.3M To Push Crowdsourced Directory Truecaller's Global Reach". TechCrunch.
  15. Crook, Jordan (6 February 2014). "Truecaller Lands $18.8M Series B From Sequoia, Partners With Yelp To Verify Business Numbers". Tech Crunch.
  16. "Sweden's Truecaller clinches $60 million in venture capital funding". Reuters. Retrieved 8 October 2014.
  17. Agarwal, Amit (7 July 2015). "Truecaller Launches SMS App In India, Aims 150 mn Users Base". Digital World.
  18. Rolander, Nicolas (18 December 2019). "Truecaller Branches Out to Fintech Ahead of Potential IPO". Bloomberg.
  19. Selvan, Sabari (17 July 2013). "Truecaller Server hacking". eHacking News.
  20. "Truecaller Statement post hacking". Official blog. Truecaller. 18 July 2013.
  21. "Researcher Discovered A Critical Security Flaw In The Truecaller App". Mashable India. 26 November 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2019.
  22. "Security Flaw In Android, iOS Phone App: 'Immediate Fix' For 150 Million Users". Forbes. Retrieved 27 November 2019.
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