By unlisting oneself, a non-user prevents Truecaller from adding their number into the database,” PI revealed. “ In their reply, they brought to our attention the option offered to non-users to “unlist” themselves. Needless to mention that India, which accounts is Truecaller’s largest userbase holding around 75% of its daily active users, has no Data Protection Law.Īfter Chloe’s case, Privacy International contacted Truecaller to enquire how they could check the safety of non-users of the app. Like many other applications, Truecaller’s holds two sets of privacy policy- one for Europe and another, for the rest of the world. In 2017, the Article 29 Working Party, an independent European advisory body on data protection and privacy, called Truecaller out for collecting and tagging non-users’ data without their consent. All of this is done without consent or even the awareness about the process. Through the tagging option on Truecaller, the person who is tagged ends up having his/her name and phone number stored on the Truecaller database. Other than the systematic breaches by the app, there are several cases which raise questions about the integrity of the app. It says, “Truecaller stands against women’s harassment and strives to make communication more safe and efficient.” And hence the campaign #ItsNotOk. It was a systematic breach by Truecaller, an app which claims to enable you to “block unwanted calls & SMS”. “Chloe was betrayed by an app she had never even heard of: TrueCaller”. The source did not see the potential for harm and tagged Chloe’s number as “Chloe The Inquirer Journalist.” Now every time Chloe makes a phone call using that phone number, her name appears to Truecaller users, like the cab driver, as ‘Chloe The Inquirer Journalist’.”, PI reported.Ĭhloe’s case is not a classic case of state surveillance. “She called her source and after they hung up, Truecaller offered the source the option to tag Chloe’s number, since the number was not in their database. On probing, it was found that one of her sources was using Truecaller. Shocked, Chloe called her office to try and find out how her identity had been breached. Her number was registered as “Chloe The Inquirer Journalist.”
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When she entered the cab, the driver greeted her “So… you work for The Inquirer (name changed by PI)?” One day, Chloe books a cab to go and meet her source. Since the people she was investigating were not state actors and had no tech resources, she was reassured that she “does not need to worry about state surveillance of her communications”.Īs a part of the investigation, Chloe told her sources who she is, who she works for and what she was trying to achieve. She bought a local SIM card to communicate with her sources. As a part of her job, she had to “gain the trust of several sources who are in extremely vulnerable positions”. She was expecting to be there for a while and might have had to return many times over the course of the year. In February 2019, Chloe travelled to a country in West Africa for an undercover reporting assignment. When necessary, it also allows her to engage in undercover reporting,” reported PI. She values this anonymity, which allows her to approach sources without raising suspicions or concerns. That is because Chloe works hard to protect her anonymity…. While her documentaries are watched by many and inspire change in the countries she works in, you would not know who Chloe is if we were to tell you her real name. “She travels around the world to work with local journalists on uncovering stories that make the headlines: from human trafficking to drug cartels and government corruption. In May 2019, Privacy International (PI), a UK-registered charity that promotes the right to privacy at an international level, published a story “concerning a journalist who was placed at risk due to the use of Truecaller by one of her sources”.Ĭhloe (name changed by PI) is an investigative journalist working for an international broadcast service.
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That was the line, with the hashtag #ItsNotOK, used in a series of recent front-page ads in major Indian dailies by Truecaller, a caller id and spam blocking app infamous for it's history of data breaches and intrusion of privacy. “You have my number, but you don’t have my consent.”