Website truecaller.com | ||
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Developer(s) True Software Scandinavia AB Initial release September 2009; 7 years ago (2009-09) Operating system Type Telephone directory, Caller ID, Social integration, Spam blocker, Crowdsourcing | ||
Developed by True Software Scandinavia AB, Truecaller finds contact details globally given name or telephone number, and has an integrated caller ID service to achieve call-blocking functionality and social media integration to keep the phonebook up-to-date with pictures and birthdays. The client is available for Android, BlackBerry OS, iOS, Series 40, Symbian s60, Firefox OS, Tizen, BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone.
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History
Truecaller was developed by True Software Scandinavia AB, a privately held company in Stockholm, Sweden founded by Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam in 2009.
It was initially launched on BlackBerry 1 July 2009. After good response of users it launched for Symbian and Microsoft Windows Mobile. It was released for Android and Apple iPhone on 23 September 2009, for RIM Blackberry on 27 February 2012, for Windows Phone on 1 March 2012, and for Nokia Series 40 on 3 September 2012.As of September 2012 Truecaller had five million users performing 120 million searches of the telephone number database every month. As of 22 January 2013 Truecaller reached 10 million users. As of December 2014 Truecaller had reached 100 million users worldwide.
In February 2014, Truecaller received $18.8 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Open Ocean, Stefan Lennhammer, and an unnamed private investor. It also announced a partnership with Yelp to use Yelp's API data to help identify business numbers when they call a smartphone.
On 7 July 2015, Truecaller launched its SMS App called Truemessenger in India exclusively. Truemessenger helps the users in identifying the sender of an SMS. Truecaller aimed 150 million users base in India.
Features and functionality
The service is a global telephone directory and reverse directory that has caller ID, social media integration and call-blocking functionality. It uses crowdsourced data, which enables it to work even in countries such as the UK and India where public data is not available.
Truecaller is available for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, and Windows Phone 8. The app is available in all countries.
On 18 September 2012 Techcrunch announced that Open Ocean Capital, a venture capital fund led by former MySQL and Nokia executives (including Michael Widenius, founder of MySQL), were investing US$1.3 million in Truecaller to push Truecaller’s global reach. Truecaller said that it intended to use the new funding to expand its footprint in "key markets"—specifically North America, Asia and the Middle East.
In early 2014, Truecaller received a $18.8 million investment led by Sequoia Capital. In October of the same year, they received $60 million from Niklas Zennstrom's Atomico investment firm and from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Security and privacy issues
On 17 July 2013, Truecaller servers were allegedly hacked into by the Syrian Electronic Army. The group claimed on its Twitter handle to have recovered 459 GBs of database, primarily due to an older version of WordPress installation on the servers. On 18 July 2013, Truecaller issued a statement on its blog stating that their website was indeed hacked, but claiming that the attack did not disclose any passwords or credit card information.
Truecaller never uploads users' stored contacts to make them searchable when downloading from Google Play and Apple App Store. Users always have the option to turn off Enhanced Search (if using Windows Phone, BlackBerry or an OEM version of the app, or opt-out from Truecaller's service.
Reception
True Software Scandinavia AB won 'Company of the Year' in November 2014 at Mobilgalan, and also won 'Best Utility App' at Gold Mobile at the annual Swedish mobile awards (Mobilgalan) in November 2011.