\n<\/p>\n
After more than a decade building a caller ID business serving over 500 million users, Truecaller is now taking the scam intelligence it gathered along the way to the open web, with no app or sign-in required.<\/p>\n
The Swedish company on Sunday launched Scam Checker, a new web and Android service that lets users paste in a suspicious phone number, link, or message to find out if it\u2019s fraudulent. To work, the service surfaces related reports from Truecaller\u2019s community, ScamFeed. However, more detailed information about a phone number, including the name associated with it, remains available only through Truecaller\u2019s existing service, which requires a sign-in. <\/p>\n
The free-to-access tool will initially be available in India and is set to expand to Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and Southeast Asia, the company said.<\/p>\n
In addition to serving as lead generation for its app, the community reports can give Truecaller a better view of the scams circulating at a given time. This could also help the company with its fraud and risk products sold to enterprises through Truecaller for Business, although Jhunjhunwala said Scam Checker itself is aimed at consumers.<\/p>\n
To work, Truecaller\u2019s Scam Checker checks the link the user submits, expanding shortened URLs and following redirects to the final destination. It then checks these against its proprietary risk database and other fraud signals. Users can also paste a suspicious message, allowing the service to pick out a phone number or link and surface related reports from the Truecaller community.<\/p>\n
Truecaller\u2019s scam checker<\/span>Image Credits:<\/strong>Truecaller<\/span><\/p>\n The launch comes as scams have grown well beyond phone calls to text messages, messaging apps, and web links. In a 2025 GSMA survey of Indian adults (PDF), 46% of those who reported being scammed said they were approached through messaging apps, while 37% via SMS and 32% through voice calls.<\/p>\n Truecaller estimates that people make about 14 million web searches a month to check suspicious links and phone numbers, based on its analysis of search volumes and traffic to existing verification services. That behavior helped shape Scam Checker, CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you need it, you\u2019re usually somewhere else. The link shows up on WhatsApp. Your mum gets a message about a traffic fine. A friend forwards you a screenshot and asks, \u2018Is this real?\u2019\u201d Jhunjhunwala said. \u201cWhat people do in that moment is search.\u201d<\/p>\n Truecaller\u2019s community is becoming a crucial piece of its scam-detection effort. The company told TechCrunch that about 20,000 scam reports are live on ScamFeed, its crowdsourced feed where users can post and discuss scams, in India, with around 1,300 new reports added each week. Between September 14 and 20, the company also said it evaluated 12.9 billion messages globally and flagged 20.3 million as fraudulent.<\/p>\n In the near future, Truecaller says it plans to broaden the types of scams Scam Checker can detect and add screenshot uploads for further analysis.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s push beyond caller ID comes as its core business faces new pressures in India, its largest market with more than 350 million users. Telecom operators are rolling out the federal government-backed Calling Name Presentation service, while Apple and Google have added their own caller identification and spam-protection features. Last week, India\u2019s telecom regulator also ordered caller-ID apps to share user-submitted spam reports with telecom operators, a move Truecaller criticized as a \u201cone-way exchange.\u201d<\/p>\n As a result, Truecaller\u2019s focus is evolving beyond caller ID. <\/p>\n \u201cCaller ID was the first problem we solved, and it\u2019s still how most people find us,\u201d he said. \u201cBut scams moved to a more multi-channel approach with links and messages, and increasingly to voice and video. Our protection has to follow the scammer.\u201d<\/p>\n