2 days ago
6
ARTICLE AD BOX
In what may prove to be a feature that strengthens the arsenal in a broader war against scam calls, Truecaller is adding a Family Protection feature to its caller identification application for Android phones and the Apple iPhone. This will be available free to users for now, with the ability to create a family group of up to five users, and the administrator will get a notification if a member in that group gets a suspected scam call. Additionally, there are further controls to manage protection levels, and share number blocklists with all family members, while specific to Android will be an ability to step in real-time to help a family member when a suspicious call is received.
Family Protection is now available in what the company calls four pilot markets, those being Sweden, Chile, Malaysia, and Kenya. There are plans for expansion into more important markets, with India lined up to receive this feature in the first quarter of 2026. This phased rollout, the company says, will allow them to gather usage trends and feedback from early adoption, helping improve for wider availability.
“Truecaller is already being used by members of the family, and now we empower the “CTO” of the family to protect the less tech savvy members. As scam tactics evolve, we want Truecaller to be the platform families rely on for peace of mind and proactive protection,” says Rishit Jhunjhunwala, CEO at Truecaller. The fact that Family Protection is available for free, and not as part of the Premium subscription, should give this a possibly much wider reach in terms of adoption and utility.
In October, Truecaller had reported 450 million monthly active users worldwide, on just Android devices. At the time, the company had noted robust growth in core markets including India, the Middle East and Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America — which has seen the addition of 50 million new active users in less than a year. In June, Truecaller had noted the three million paying subscriber milestone.
Truecaller hopes that adoption and utility will unlock long-term revenue, as families will probably want to subscribe to the Premium subscription tier which has additional tools including advanced spam blocking, automatic rejection of high-risk numbers and removing in-app ads. This also marks a moment for Truecaller when the utility goes beyond simple call and message identification, a uniqueness that is under threat from measures such as deployment of network level spam identification by the likes of Bharti Airtel, as well as the government of India’s to build CNAP, or Caller Name Presentation across telecom networks in the country — this is expected to take the name information from the KYC details linked to that particular mobile connection.
Truecaller’s announcement of Family Protection mode is a new feature, but also a commentary on the state of affairs of our mobile networks where scam calls have become routine. It is also Truecaller’s most strategic leap in years — that is, moving from passive identification to active intervention, when required. And as phone call and message based scams only increase in number, having a stronger line of defence isn’t at all out of place.
English (US) ·