How Truecaller App Works? Explained in Detail

Remember the first time, when you have installed Truecaller App on your phone. How relaxed you felt by identifying that annoying unknown number. For some people, It’s like a magic that identifies the unknown calls before receiving them.

The journey of the Truecaller App was started back in 2009. The Truecaller App received a massive success of 10,000 downloads in just one week.

At that time, the Truecaller’s database was limited and so was unable to identify each and every number. But with time, everything was upgraded. Now, this app can identify most of the unknown numbers in the World. Not only calls, but it can also block spam calls and SMS. Let’s understand how the Truecaller app works in the easiest way possible.

Read: How Apple’s New ‘Find My’ Offline iPhone Tracking Actually Works?

How Truecaller Works?

Truecaller App is based on the concept of Crowd Sourcing. Crowd Sourcing is a process of gathering data from multiple sources and then using it for some useful means.

When someone installs the Truecaller app on their phone, the entire phone book of that person gets synced with Truecaller’s Servers.

It means the 100 million users who have installed Truecaller in their smartphones have surrendered their phone book to Truecaller. After going through several data matching/refining processes, this data is made available to all Truecaller users.

In simple words, the entire process is based on giving and taking. The user who wants the information about an unknown number must have to submit his saved contacts to Truecaller.

The Truecaller app allows users to sign in using their phone number whereas if you use Truecaller’s website, you have to sign in using your Google account or Hotmail by allowing them to manage your contacts.

There are people who think — Truecaller steals their contacts without asking for any permission, but this is false. When a user installs Truecaller, as a part of the end user agreement, the true caller app asks the user to allow access the user’s address book/contacts on the smartphone. Even the website asks for the same permission.

So, basically, the whole story is based on the large database that Truecaller has built in these eight years. Truecaller uses one’s phone book to help other and vice-versa and that’s why people see casual names instead of full names. Suppose my friend has Truecaller installed and saved my number as “Subham” or “bro” or “Subham Kaps”. Then when I call someone who doesn’t have my number, he/she may see any of these three names instead of my full name – “Subham Kapiswe”.

There are lots of other technologies based on Crowdsourcing like Google Maps Live Traffic. So, according to me, there’s nothing wrong or unsafe about using Truecaller. If you liked this article, share with your friends and do let us know your queries in the comments if you have any.