I asked if she knows they steal your contact list and spy on you and her answer was “so? It’s just phone numbers and names and they need to get the data somewhere as they are providing the service for free”
I live in a developed country and we have a high standard of living.
Giving this anecdote to illustrate many people genuinely don’t see TrueCaller’s spying as a big deal. This is unfortunate but it’s how things often are.
This is not a one-time sync, either. It will upload future new contacts and changes.
And, finally, if you manage to create a new account without a phone number, Instagram appears to flag your account for suspicious activity at some point and mandates that you do. They can then correspond your phone number with other users' contact lists to determine your identity. It can even suss out if you provided a Google Voice/VOIP number and require a "real" one instead.
Honestly, Apple needs to get in front of this on iOS just like they've done partially with Location data, Photos/Videos, and data brokering. They need to let you select shareable contacts. Kind of like the Circles that Google Wave had. Instead of letting apps force you into an all or nothing approach.
Even everyone's much-loved Signal does this. Contacts sync is presented as "not now" or "yes forever." The "not now" message even explicitly says they'll bug you again.
[1] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007061452-Do...
Regardless of how you hash them, it needs to work on a phone, and it needs to be reasonably unique... so you can just enumerate literally every phone number ever on a decent computer in a few seconds and, if combined with basically any other information at all (like an area code), that's enough to figure out many or most contacts trivially.
The difference, which that article goes into, is that now they're going all-in on you also trusting Intel's SGX and thus every single thing in between you, them, their hardware delivery pipelines, etc. Which makes collecting that data completely ok (it's done securely now thanks to SGX!), because you should obviously trust Intel because CPU vendors have had such a fantastic track record in their on-chip security systems. (</sarcasm> in case that wasn't clear)
There's a lot to like about Signal's privacy, both in isolation and in comparison to other messengers. They're doing great work. But I have absolutely no idea why they persist in this data collection. Their bull-headedness on zero options around it for years on end smells more suspicious than anything else at this point tbh. About 3/4 of the people I've known who installed Signal immediately left forever because someone they knew contacted them to say "welcome" and they got super creeped out wondering how they knew they had joined. And then the contact-er frequently left too because they had no idea it wasn't consensual, and were creeped out as well.
Assuming they are telling the truth, why would you care that your contacts know you also use signal (like them)?
Also true caller adds security when you're from an under represented or a minority groups. I especially know women who use Truecaller to make sure they know who is calling / texting them from new numbers.
Having multiple SIMs in India will go away, or at least become something only the rich have, it's only a matter of time. This is because having that second SIM is no longer cost-free.
Multiple SIMs in India were a side-effect of it being near-free to have a prepaid SIM to receive calls. This was subsidized by high calling charges (calling from one part of India to another was expensive) and even higher data prices.
Then Jio entered the market with a ground-up 4G network and said, this is BS. Calls and texts are free, with no reasonable limits. We'll only charge you for data, and we'll provide 1.5GB a day or more -- starting at INR 150 a month paid 3 months at a time. The party ended for a lot of operators at that point as they hemorrhaged customers. Most operators simply folded or merged until now there are only 3 private players and one non-serious state player.
Driven by pressure from Jio, the other two private players (Airtel and Vi, aka Vodafone) have decided to amp up monthly charges for pre-paid phones. Essentially, if you're not spending at least INR 120 a month they don't want you. India has number portability so it's not like you're held hostage or anything.
INR 120 sounds super low but it's not for a lot of Indians who earn salaries closer to India's median per-capita income, and also it's an extremely limited level of service, for actual use you need to pay more -- typically around INR 250 monthly for 1.5GB data per day (remember, most Indians don't have wired Internet so 1.5GB data per day is not excessive). Jio and its competitors have hiked prices substantially, of course.
The last refuge for people on limited budgets is the state-run telco, BSNL, but the government will sell it -- it's only a matter of time. Expect prices to spike again, then.
Anyway, multiple SIMs in India are increasingly less viable for ordinary people. It'll take a while for behaviour to change, but it'll change.
I wonder what the percentiles is for number of networks in populous and large countries. Perhaps 3 networks is the number of maximum economically viable long term networks due to the enormously high cost of installing all the fiber and cell station infrastructure across the country.
They're broadly compatible from a handset perspective - sometimes there's better coverage for one or the other in some area or newer tech but for most day-to-day use you can get a SIM from any carrier and expect to be able to use it any (non-network-locked) device.
If I am not mistaken some shell company bought the spectrum then Jio bought the shell company.
That's everywhere, not just India.
Fortunately we’ve agreed on not sharing kids pics and information on places like FB insta etc.
To them features/functionality/cost is first, and privacy is an afterthought. I see this view in a lot of people nowadays.
Fun fact: Elector rolls are public record. Your address is already out in the open.
> Giving this anecdote to illustrate many people genuinely don’t see TrueCaller’s spying as a big deal.
That's because it makes no material difference to them.
I have zero issues with my neighbors having my phone number. If I lived in a smallish place, extending that would be fine.
I have huge issues with spammers and con artists having it.
A locally distributed physical book works great for the first and, at the very least, makes the second work for it.
Online databases are basically made to order for the second, and are far more extensive than needed for the first.
It is just another example where adding automation and cheap storage actively makes a situation worse.
Especially as part of a commercial transaction to a for-profit company?
"Hey, Bob! I'm going to give some company your name, phone number, occupation, and whatever else I know about you stored in my contact list in exchange for a beer. Is that OK?"
Once you give your info away it is not "your" info anymore. It is info about you, but you do not own it.
Is it rude? sure, but not illegal.
okay.
Depends on the jurisdiction. Under the GDPR this might very well be illegal, though obviously enforcement of it is significantly lacking so it's unlikely to ever actually be tested in court.
What if you avoid using the system default contacts store, i.e., keep it empty, and instead you use an app like OpenContacts.^1 To apps like TruCaller, it will appear the the user has no contacts.
1. https://f-droid.org/packages/opencontacts.open.com.openconta...
I started using TrueCaller some 8 years back and the biggest reason for me to use it was to prevent Robo callers/spams.
Oh it's the classist "I'm smarter than the average person in my country" crowd again.
Why do you assume you know better? Perhaps they know what they're trading and perhaps it's worth the cost.
Guess which one gets all the apps - It's definitely not the one that costs me over 100$/mo to maintain!
I also want to minimize their information about my network.
For a number of years it was quite common for folks in the lowest income brackets to change their phone numbers quite often because of rampant competition between mobile network providers. The "Mobile Number Portability" system was eventually introduced that minimized this to a large degree. Eventually the competition subsided and this reduced significantly to a point where it's not very common anymore per my understanding.
When I need to use Trucaller I use it via their web interface exclusively with a google account that has 0 contacts for them to steal. I remember finding my number listed many years ago as my name with (web developer) in parenthesis, likely stolen from some old customer of mine.