Truecaller identifies 29.7 bn spam calls, 8.5 bn spam SMS in India in 2019

Caller identification app Truecaller on Wednesday said it identified 29.7 billion spam calls and 8.5 billion spam SMS for its users in India last year.

The Swedish company has also rolled out a new spam activity indicator for Android phone users that will give detailed statistics on the spammer.

"Truecaller has become indispensable in the lives of 240 million (monthly) global active users... In 2019 alone, we identified 29.7 billion spam calls and 8.5 billion spam SMS for our users in India," Truecaller said in a statement.

Truecaller has over 170 million monthly active users in India.

The company, in a previous report, had said India had ranked fifth in 2019 in terms of number of spam calls received by users per month, and eighth position in terms of spam SMS.

Talking about the latest feature, Truecaller on Wednesday said it has rolled out the Spam Activity Indicator for Android users to build upon its core proposition of making communication safer and more efficient for everyone.

Currently, three trends - spam reports, call activity and peak calling hours - will be shown to users when they tap on the spammer's profile image in the app.

A future update will show users the stats right in the caller ID itself to help users make the decision before even picking up the call, Truecaller said.

The feature will be extended to iOS (iPhone) users in the coming weeks.

Spam reports will showcase how many times a Truecaller user has marked a specific number as spam and indicate by percentage if it is increasing or decreasing according to the reports.

Call Activity will show the number of calls that particular phone number has made recently, potentially indicating how much of a spammer the number is. Peak calling hours is a time chart that identifies when the spammer is most active, Truecaller said.