Truecaller lets you hang up on scammers for your family

Truecaller, the caller identity platform, recently introduced a feature that allows one person to act as an admin for a family group. The admin receives alerts about fraud calls received by other members and can even remotely end a call if they suspect a family member is being scammed.

With over 450 million users, Truecaller initially launched this feature in December in a few countries, including Sweden, Chile, Malaysia, and Kenya. After seeing encouraging results, the company rolled it out globally, including in India, its largest market. The feature is free and available to all users, even those without a paid Truecaller plan.

Image credit: Truecaller

With this feature, a tech‑savvy member of a family or friend group can become the admin of a group of up to five members. Once other members join, the admin receives alerts about potentially fraudulent calls those members receive. If the admin believes a call could be harmful, they can also end the call remotely. The admin can get alerts for fraud calls on both iOS and Android, but can only end calls for Android users.

On Android, members can grant the admin permission to access real‑time activity data, such as walking or driving status, battery level, and phone sound settings (to check if the phone is in silent mode). Truecaller says this helps admins monitor elderly members and only contact them when they are not walking or driving.

Image credit: Truecaller

The admin can also block specific numbers and international calling codes, and share a blocklist with group members.

Truecaller notes that the admin cannot view the non‑spam call history or SMS history of group members.

“Unfortunately, I think we all know someone in our family or among friends who has been affected by fraud,” said Kunal Dua, Chief Product Officer at Truecaller, in a call with TechCrunch. “In that sense, this represents a fundamental shift in what Truecaller has been focusing on as a problem,” he added.

Image credit: Truecaller

Last year, Truecaller introduced a voicemail feature for Indian users that includes an AI assistant. The assistant listens for calls when a user is unavailable and provides a transcript summary. The company is now exploring a similar AI approach for family protection, aiming to potentially alert the admin about the type of fraud call a group member is receiving.

The company is also exploring the use of AI to screen calls and automatically disconnect them when scam‑related keywords are detected, such as “digital arrest” — a tactic where impersonators pose as law enforcement to extract information or money from call recipients.

In India, scam calls have been increasing, causing widespread financial losses. Truecaller reports identifying over 7.7 billion fraud calls last year. Indian authorities have launched several initiatives, including a controversial policy known as SIM binding, which could affect the functioning of apps like WhatsApp and Telegram.

Truecaller is facing headwinds. Its stock has dropped more than 80% over the past 12 months. In its Q4 2025 report, the company said its EBITDA — a measure of operating profitability — fell 49% year‑over‑year, with ad revenue declining 31%. The company is also contending with India’s Caller Name Presentation (CNAP) system, which shows the caller’s name as registered with their phone carrier. Truecaller maintains that simply displaying a caller’s name will not reduce spam calls, arguing that its platform goes further by offering community‑based reports.

“In India, there has been a lot of discussion about the imminent rollout of CNAP,” said Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala during the Q4 2025 earnings call. “CNAP has been partially rolled out, and so far the impact on our user growth is limited. As we have said before, we expect that CNAP might have some impact on user growth, but that remains to be seen as CNAP reaches full rollout.”

Jhunjhunwala continued, “Our focus remains on delivering a superior product. As you know, consumers can choose to use CNAP and Truecaller simultaneously, where we provide much more information, context, and various other solutions.”