If you do not reside in the Republic of South Africa the applicable privacy policy is available here.

TRUECALLER PRIVACY POLICY

Truecaller was created to give our users more information and control over their communications and our approach is based on clear privacy principles.

Today, we enable messaging, caller identification, spam blocking, internet calling and other services for our users around the world.

This Privacy Policy describes how Truecaller International LLP (“Truecaller”, “we” or “us”) collects, stores, uses, transfers, shares or otherwise processes your information if you reside in the Republic of South Africa.

By using, or continuing to use, our Services you accept the terms of this Privacy Policy and consent to the collection, storage, use, transfer, sharing or other processing of your information as described herein and in the Terms of Service and by your clicking the “GET STARTED” tab on the sign up page of the application, you consent to the application of the terms of this Privacy Policy and Terms of Service to your usage of our Services. To promote clarity, we have layered this Privacy Policy by including hyperlinks that provide you with more detailed information, additional context and examples, and such information forms part of this Privacy Policy.

Our paid Services are subject to this Privacy Policy as well as the Specific Terms for Paid Services available at https://www.truecaller.com/premium-terms-of-service.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT

When you install, access or use our Services we may process the following categories of information for the purposes described below.

INFORMATION YOU GIVE US

Account and user profile. We accept your name and mobile phone number to create your user account and profile. You may also choose to provide additional information for your user profile such as photo, address, email and your status message.

SMS. If you have granted explicit consent , we access your SMSs (but without revealing their content) to identify and block spam in which case we perform on-device processing to help you organize SMS into contacts, spam and other categories. With your consent we also provide smart summary notifications and reminders for transactional SMSs. In addition, to enable the provision of the Services we collect some metadata (including details of the sender, recipient, telecom operator and time) relating to your calls, SMSs and messages, but this does not reveal their content. You may also consent to share the content of any SMSs when providing spam feedback to help improve the Services.

Other types of messages. If you use the Services to send flash and instant messages, your messages are only kept by us for a limited period of time in order to deliver them and will then be deleted. We do not monitor the content of your messages. You also consent that we may delete your messages at such intervals as we may determine.

Address book. If you have granted consent , we access the contacts in your address book . By granting such access, you confirm that you are authorized to share the information in your address book with us. If the Truecaller App is downloaded from the Apple App Store or Google Play we do not receive, store or share any of the contact information in your address book.

Enhanced search. If you download the Truecaller App from a source other than the Apple App store or Google Play store or use our web services, and choose to enable the Enhanced Search feature, we accept contact information comprising names, phone numbers and email addresses from your address book. Users of our web service need to register using third party services such as Google or Microsoft. For web users who enable the Enhanced Search feature we accept and use the address book contacts and the user profile information associated with the third-party services to enhance the results shared with other users. Truecaller uses this information for CallerID to identify names associated with incoming calls made to our users and to allow our users to search for a phone number that is already in their possession in order to identify the name associated with such a number. If the version of the Truecaller App that you are using has the Enhanced Search feature, or if you use our web service, such feature is disabled by default i.e. it is enabled only when you provide your consent at the time of sign-up or later through the settings menu of the Truecaller App. If you provide personal information about someone else, you confirm that you are authorized to provide such information to us, that the relevant person is aware that you have provided their information, and that they consent to our use of their information according to this Privacy Policy. You can deactivate Enhanced Search at any time to render your entire address book and related information unavailable for search in the Truecaller database.

Customer support and surveys. If you contact us about your experience of using our Services, we will use the information you have provided to respond to and resolve issues, for example, when you contact us via email support. You may also provide us information if you decide to participate in contests and surveys, or subject to your settings, if we send you special offers and promotions.

INFORMATION WE GET WHEN YOU USE OUR SERVICES

Device and connection information. We collect your device and connection information and unique identifiers so that you can connect to and use our Services.

Location information. If you have granted consent , we may collect information about your precise device location using GPS, cell towers, beacons and Wi-Fi access points, for example, to enable user features such as sharing your location via messages or providing more relevant search results.

Log and event information. When you use our Services we collect log and event information such as about how you use our Services, configure them, access them, and how you interact with other users and numbers including by tagging, blocking, calling or messaging them, or sending contact requests. We log events (for example, to populate your "Recent calls” list) and also collect performance, diagnostics, website, bug, and crash reports and logs. This enables us to provide our Services effectively and improve their quality.

Order information. If you register for paid Services, we will collect your payment and billing information and payment receipts, including from third parties processing such payments. This enables us to keep record of our transactions with you.

Cookies. We collect some information from you automatically through the use of cookies in order to operate and provide our Services including the Truecaller web-based service. You can learn more in our Cookie Policy.

THIRD PARTY INFORMATION

We receive information about you from third parties when you register for Services or update your profile information using third party services such as social media accounts, and also from other users. For example, other users may tag your number using a list of descriptions or associate any phone number with a business or name, or block and report it to others as spam via our platform.

You may also use our Services in connection with third-party services. In order for the Services to interoperate with such third-party services we may receive information from them about you or we may share your information with them. For example, you may log in to our Services using third party services or create an account on a third-party platform by using our Services to pre-populate your information to register with them or you may connect your user profile with third-party services. By logging in to our Services using third party services or creating an account on a third-party platform using our Services or otherwise connecting your user profile on our Services with third-party services, you agree that we may: (a) collect, use and retain the information provided by these third-party services in accordance with this Privacy Policy, and (b) supplement your user information if, for example, you choose to create your account or update your profile information by using Facebook, Google or Microsoft. Such third parties only share such information with your prior consent and based on their privacy terms. We never store any passwords created for third-party services. Your use of third-party services is governed by the terms and privacy policies of such services.

NON-PERSONAL INFORMATION

Users. Some information including usage information and other information that may arise from your interaction with the Services, cannot be used to identify you, whether in combination with other information or otherwise and will not constitute personal information for the purposes of this policy.

Business profiles. A business may create a profile to make its business information (including business or trading name, phone number, email, address, business hours and social media handles) publicly available to users of the Truecaller platform. Such information will not constitute personal information for the purposes of this policy and the Business Profile Terms shall apply.

HOW WE USE INFORMATION

We use the information collected to provide, operate, maintain, support, improve, understand, market and personalize our Services for you in the following ways.

Services. We use your information to provide and operate our Services including:

• helping you to communicate through our Services and identifying you when you contact others;
• providing messaging, internet calling and dialer functionality and populating numbers in your call and message logs;
• to verify your name and mobile number and assign a ‘verification badge’ on validating the same;
• categorizing and blocking calls and SMS for you;
• depending on your settings providing push notifications, smart SMS notifications and reminders;
• assisting you to identify which of your contacts also use Truecaller and providing “last seen”, “who searched for me” and “who viewed my profile” functionality;
• allowing other users to search for your name and request your contact details by sending you a contact request (this is the default setting) or, where you consent, allowing other users to obtain your contact details by searching for your name;
• displaying the name associated with numbers for incoming and outgoing calls, SMS and messages or following a manual number search against our database;
• creating and analyzing aggregated information on calling patterns and usage of the Services and allowing users to block or report numbers as spam to build and make available a user community feedback-based spam blocking directory, spam list and associated contextual information to help users detect and prevent unlawful activity;
• allowing users to search for businesses registered with Truecaller;
• providing customer support, responding to your queries, investigating and resolving issues related to the Services;
• improving, fixing, and customizing our Services;
• understanding how our users use our Services;
• analyzing and using the information to evaluate and improve our Services, business and operations;
• developing or providing services to third parties or to improve third party services; and
• researching, developing and testing new services and features.

Safety and security. We use your information to comply with applicable laws, verify user accounts and activity, ensure service functionality, safety and data accuracy, investigate suspicious activity and enforce our agreements, perform troubleshooting activities, and prevent fraud, security breaches, circumvention of the intended use of our Services, our Terms of Use, this Privacy Policy and restricted, prohibited or illegal activities.

Advertising and marketing. Subject to your settings and applicable law, we may use your information, including in conjunction with third party data or services, to provide you with personalized advertising , marketing and special offers and promotions. We may also use your information to measure the performance of our advertising and marketing services. We may use your information to contact you about our Services and features or to inform you of updates including to our terms and policies. Subject to your settings, we may send you newsletter emails, SMS and similar notifications about our products and services and those of our business partners. You may opt out at any time from receiving such personalized advertising , marketing and special offers and promotions by changing your settings.

Third party services. With your consent , we enable you to use and share your information to register for and log in to third party services or for you to use our Services in connection with other third-party services. For example, to use payment services, financial services (such as credit, savings, insurance, investments and credit worthiness), travel or stay services, online services and social networking services. If you use a third-party service via a link in our Services, you may be providing information directly to such third party. In such cases the terms and privacy policies of the third-party service will apply to your use of their services. You may also choose to access our Services through a third party’s promotion of our Services.

Third party service providers. We use third-party service providers to support our Services and business. For example, we use third parties to distribute our app, and to provide verification services, infrastructure services, advertising services, marketing services, customer support, bug testing, analyze how our Services are used, measure effectiveness of ads and services, facilitate payments, and conduct surveys and research. We require these third parties to take appropriate organizational and technical measures to protect your information and observe applicable laws.

Business services. We permit you to send or receive business messages regarding transactions with third parties including orders, reminders, appointments, deliveries, updates and, subject to your settings , marketing. For example, you may receive messages about upcoming journeys, purchase receipts and delivery notifications. We may also provide measurement and analytics services to assist businesses to better understand the effectiveness of their user interactions on our Services and the distribution of their products and services.

Statistical data. We use aggregated, de-identified, or anonymized information for statistical and analytical purposes. We may share such data with third parties. We do not consider personal information to include information that has been de-identified, made anonymous or aggregated so that it can no longer be used to identify a specific person , directly, or in combination with other information or means that are reasonably likely to be available to us. We may provide measurement and analytics services (using such information) in order to assist businesses to better understand the effectiveness of their user interactions on our Services, engagement, and the distribution of their products and services.

HOW WE ENABLE INFORMATION SHARING

We share your information to provide, operate, maintain, support, improve, understand or personalize our Services, including in the following ways.

Your communications. To enable you to use and communicate via our Services we enable sharing of your information with other Truecaller users that you call or message and we identify you to them when you do so, for example, by means of Caller ID.

Account and user information. By default, other users have to send you a contact request, which you can choose to accept or decline, to get your phone number. If a user already has your phone number, they will be able to use it to search for you and see your profile information and any tags assigned to you. If they do not have your phone number and search for your name, your profile photo (if any) and country will be visible, but not your phone number. You may choose to make your phone number and user profile public, in which case such information will be available to others. When you contact another user or they contact you, ‘last seen’ and availability status information may be visible. If you search for and/or view the profile of another user they will be informed via the ‘who searched for me’ and/or ‘who viewed my profile’ feature, save where you have a premium subscription and the ‘view profiles privately’ feature is activated.

Users and businesses. If you communicate with other users or businesses, they may be able to store or share your information such as your phone number, other contact details and messages. You can limit the information that is available about you through our Services including your availability or your profile information, by editing your profile, making it private by changing your Services settings or by blocking numbers.

Third party services. With your consent , we enable you to use and share your information to register for, log in to, or use third party services. For example, you share your information with Google if you choose to back up your data to Google Drive. If you use a third-party service via a link in our Services, you may be sharing information directly with such third party. In such cases the terms and privacy policies of the third-party will apply to such information and your use of their services.

Third party service providers. We use trusted third-party service providers to support our Services and business. When we share information with such third parties we require them to take appropriate organizational and technical measures to protect your information and observe applicable laws.

Law and safety. We may disclose your information if we believe such action is necessary to: (a) comply with applicable laws, government requests or legal process served on us; (b) protect and defend our rights and the enforcement of our agreements including to ensure technical service functionality, data accuracy, perform trouble-shooting, protect our platform and services from abuse, and prevent or detect security breaches and illegal, restricted or prohibited activity; and (c) protect the security and safety of users or members of the public or other aspects of public importance provided that such disclosure is lawful.

Acquisitions and transfer. We may disclose and transfer your information or our obligations and rights under this Privacy Policy to any of our affiliates or successors, and to any third party who proposes to acquire all or part of business or operations, whether such acquisition is by way of investment, merger, restructuring, sale of capital or assets, by operation of law, or otherwise.

UNLISTING BY NON-USERS

Any person who is not a user and does not wish to have their contact information made available through the Enhanced Search or name search functionalities, may exclude themselves from further queries by notifying Truecaller via our website at www.truecaller.com/unlisting. Truecaller may collect and process information relating to such requests in order to honor them and track or record their status

LEGAL BASES AND DATA RETENTION

We collect, use and share your information in relation to our Terms of Service (for example, to deliver the Services,) including based on your consent, usage of our Services, and the choices you make upon registration and in your settings or as a matter of public interest or based on a legitimate interest of Truecaller (which is not overridden by your interests or Constitutional fundamental rights and freedoms). Such legitimate interests of Truecaller includes to protect and maintain the security of the Services, to understand and improve our Services and user relationships and to administer our business and customer support, or to create and maintain business directories, spam blocking directories and provide contextual information to detect and prevent unlawful activity. Where we process data based only on your consent, you may withdraw your consent at any time via your settings. We also collect and process and retain your information to comply with applicable laws and our legal obligations.

Truecaller will retain your information for as long as you maintain a user profile in the Services and as provided below. You may at any time choose to deactivate your account and delete your user profile and information via your settings. If you deactivate your account, your profile information will no longer be visible to others in the Services, and we delete from our servers any of your information that we do not need to provide our Services including any undelivered messages. However, deactivating your account will not delete information that you have shared with others, for example, messages that you have sent to other users. We will retain your information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in our Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. We may also retain your information in order to accommodate your choices regarding marketing

SECURITY AND TRANSFER OF INFORMATION

The Services require by their very nature that your information may be transferred to other users and third parties across the globe for effective provisioning of the Services and such transfer may be to a country that does not have data privacy laws equivalent to the laws in your country of residence. Truecaller may use cloud-based services and subcontract storage or processing of your information to third parties located in countries other than your home country in order to provide the Services, such as India and the USA. Information emanating from one country may for example, be transferred to and processed in another country.

We take all reasonable precautions to protect personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorized access, including by requiring transferees of information located in other countries to comply with contractual data protection requirements. Truecaller´s third party data processor list is available at https://www.truecaller.com/third-party-data-processors.

We have implemented physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards in order to protect the information, including that the information will be stored on secured servers and protected by secured networks to which access is limited to a few authorized employees and personnel. However, no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. In case of any breach, your remedy will be as per the Terms of Service. You acknowledge and agree that Truecaller may transfer your information as described above for purposes consistent with this policy.

ACCESSING AND CONTROLLING YOUR INFORMATION

Truecaller provides many choices for you to manage your information. For example, you can access and control your information via our in-app Privacy Center (available under Settings>Privacy Center) where you can use tools to view, rectify, download, restrict processing or delete your data. In addition, you can change settings to limit the collection and use of your information for ad targeting and the provision of special offers or promotions. You may also contact Truecaller for assistance using the contact information below, and we will consider your request in accordance with applicable law.

CHILDREN’S PRIVACY

We do not intentionally or knowingly collect or solicit information from children under the relevant age of consent under the laws of their respective jurisdictions or knowingly allow such persons to register for the Services. The Services are not directed at children and is only intended to be used by individuals who have attained the relevant age of consent under the laws of their respective jurisdictions.

If you believe that we might have information from or about a child under the relevant age of consent, please contact us at dpo.southafrica@truecaller.com. We will promptly review the information and take appropriate action as required under applicable law.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

Truecaller may at any time change this Privacy Policy. Truecaller will notify users of such changes by push notice or via notice in the Services or by other means. If you object to any changes, you may deactivate your account and cease using the Services. Your continued use of the Services after Truecaller have communicated changes to this Privacy Policy, will mean that the collection, use, sharing and processing of your personal information is subject to the new Privacy Policy. We may from time to time set out more detailed information on how we process your personal information in relation to particular Services in supplemental Privacy Notices which shall be incorporated into and form part of this Privacy Policy.

COOKIES

As described in our Cookie Policy, we use cookies, web beacons, flash cookies, HTML 5 cookies, pixel tags and other web application software methods, including mobile application identifiers, to help us recognize you across the Services, learn about your interests both on and off the Services, improve your experience, increase security, measure use and effectiveness of the Services, and serve advertising. You can control Cookies through your browser settings and other tools. By interacting with the Services, you consent to the use and placement of Cookies on your device in accordance with our Privacy Policy, which by reference incorporates our Cookie Policy.

CONTACT US

For general enquiries about our Privacy Policy please feel free to contact us at support@truecaller.com.

If you have any specific questions about our Privacy Policy including about the collection, use or sharing of your information or access to your information, please contact our Data Protection Officer at dpo.southafrica@truecaller.com or by post to ‘The Data Protection Officer’ at the address below. We endeavour to resolve your grievance within a period of 30 days from when it is received.

If you have any grievance please contact the Grievance Officer at grievances@truecaller.com or by post to ‘The Grievances Officer’ at the address below.

Truecaller International LLP 1st Floor, Platina Tower
M.G Road, Near Sikandarpur Metro Station,
Sector 28, Gurugram,
Haryana 122001
India

COMPLAINTS TO THE INFORMATION REGULATOR

If you think that we have processed your personal information in a manner that is against applicable law, you undertake to first contact us so that we can try and resolve your complaint. If you are still not satisfied you can contact the information regulator at https://justice.gov.za/inforeg/.

Effective date: 1 July 2021 Last updated: 4 October 2024