Indian Army says TrueCaller is a spyware, should be deleted from phones immediately

Indian Army has issued an advisory for its personnel asking them to delete TrueCaller from their phones immediately. The advisory issued on November 24 notes that TrueCaller is a "spyware" or a "malicious ware" and that it should be immediately deleted from the personal and official phones. The advisor also lists some 40 other apps, mostly from China-based companies, that should not be installed on smartphones by Indian Army personnel and if they are installed, they should be deleted immediately.

TrueCaller, incidentally, doesn't send data to China-based servers and it is not an app made by a Chinese company. However, it does have certain privacy issues given how it works. Whenever a user installs the app, its functionality -- mostly checking for the identity of the callers and fighting spam -- is enabled only when a user allows the app access to its contacts. These contacts are then copied and uploaded on to TrueCaller servers.

The way TrueCaller scoops contacts is probably the reason why TrueCaller is in the list of apps that Indian Army considers too dangerous. Earlier, talking of TrueCaller, here is what we wrote:

The problem is with the default behaviour of Truecaller. It has built in some privacy checks -- you can delist your number, if you find it in the Truecaller database -- but these steps are after thoughts. By design, by default, Truecaller is a pervasive app. Its business model is all about collecting numbers. And it does so zealously. When you install the app, it takes a look at your whole contact book and siphon off that data -- numbers and names included -- to its servers.