WhatsApp Joins Hands With Truecaller To Fight Rising Spam-Call Menace In India

Global messaging giant WhatsApp and Swedish caller ID app Truecaller are gearing up to jointly take on the menace of spam calls, which have been on the rise in India, the largest market for both firms.

What Happened? Truecaller CEO Alan Mamedi told Reuters that the app was testing a feature that could allow users to spot spam calls on WhatsApp and other messaging platforms. The feature is set to go live globally later in May, Mamedi said.

“Over the last two weeks, we have seen a spike in user reports from India about spam calls over WhatsApp,” Mamedi told the news agency, adding that it was a relatively new phenomenon to see telemarketers switch to internet calling.

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India has one of the highest rates of spam calls in the world, with a report published by LocalCircles in March last year suggesting that 64% of Indians received three or more spam calls every day.

In February, the Indian telecom regulator directed telecom operators like Reliance Jio and Airtel to take steps to weed out telemarketing calls using artificial intelligence filters. Mamedi told Reuters that Truecaller was in talks with Indian operators to put such a system in place.

WhatsApp has over 48.7 crore users in India, making it the most-used messaging platform in the country. Meanwhile, India accounts for 71% of Truecaller’s 33.8 crore active monthly users.

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