New Delhi: In a recent advancement, the Indian Army had told its soldiers to remove 89 apps from their mobile phones and gadgets. An alarm was raised by Truecaller, a Swedish origin company when its name was added to the list. The company’s spokesperson termed this prohibition as “unjust” and “unfair”.
Chinese apps like TikTok, UC Browser, etcetera, which were already banned by the central government formulated a part of this list. The other inclusions were the infamous social media applications like Facebook, Instagram, Zoom, Snapchat, Reddit and more.
According to the Indian Army, they asked its personnel to delete these apps citing national security concerns and safeguarding the confidential data.
Truecaller expressed its dismay over the unexpected event.
“It is disappointing and saddening to learn that Truecaller is among the list of 89 apps being banned by the Indian Armed Forces for their personnel. Truecaller is an app of Swedish origin that considers India its home,” a Truecaller spokesperson said in a statement.
The company’s headquarter is situated in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. It offers a range of services to its users like caller ID detection, spam alerts, in-app messaging and calling features and more.
It questioned the reason for the ban despite being a safe app to use.
“We would like to reiterate that Truecaller remains safe to use, both for our citizens and for our esteemed armed forces personnel. We see no reason for Truecaller to be on this list and will investigate the matter further,” added the statement.
“Truecaller provides a vital service for over 170 million people in India, identifying and blocking hundreds of millions of spam calls and SMS every single day,” it added.
The company claimed that it has never sent any Indian user data to foreign countries as it is a secure platform. Calling the inclusion in the 89 apps list as “unfair” and “unjust”, Truecaller said that it stores the Indian user data in the nation itself. It further added that all in-app features are checked off by default and need permissions by the user to be functioning.
Moreover, a majority of Truecaller employees globally are Indian and the platform does not upload phonebooks or sell user data, it said.
Last year, in 2019, a “bug” of the platform automatically created a Unified Payments Interface (UPI) account for thousands of users in India, evoking sudden panic and fear amid them. This UPI was made with the ICICI bank, without consent from any user.
Later, Truecaller worked on the bug and sent out apology statements to all the users who got affected in any means through it.
