Truecaller and WhatsApp Unite to Shield India from Spam Calls

The rise of WhatsApp spam in India has prompted the messaging platform to take action by testing a new feature to combat unwanted calls. In their efforts to tackle this issue, Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, has partnered with Truecaller. Let’s delve into the details of this collaboration.

Truecaller, a renowned Swiss-based service provider known for its advanced Caller ID filtration and identification techniques, has announced the integration of its caller identification service with WhatsApp. This partnership aims to address the increasing problem of spam calls reported by users in India.

Alan Mamedi, the CEO of Truecaller, acknowledged the surge in user reports of spam calls over WhatsApp in India, stating, “Over the last two weeks, we have seen a spike in user reports from India about spam calls over WhatsApp,” as reported by Reuters.

According to a Truecaller report in 2021, users in India faced an average of 17 spam calls daily, highlighting the severity of the issue. It is crucial to reduce or ideally eliminate this problem entirely. The exact approach that Truecaller will take in this collaboration is yet to be revealed. However, based on Truecaller’s existing spam call notifier, we can anticipate the appearance of a floating banner on the home screen whenever a call is received from an unknown number on WhatsApp.

Truecaller has also expressed its intention to collaborate with Indian telecom providers to introduce this feature. This aligns with a directive issued by India’s telecom regulator in February, which urges carriers like Jio and Airtel to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) for blocking telemarketing calls.

In recent times, WhatsApp has been introducing a range of features, including the ability to add captions to forwarded messages and the option to use WhatsApp on up to four phones simultaneously, among other enhancements.