On Wednesday (July 8, 2026), the caller ID firm Truecaller lashed out at directives from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that forbade the former from showing spam warnings for phone numbers in the 140 and 160 series. Those two series were implemented last year as the designated numbers from which telemarketing and banking numbers are permitted to call users.
In March, Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala told The Hindu that it was “really good that … the government has taken notice” of the spam issue and that “we have close relations with the Department of Telecommunications where we share fraud data with them,” and they did so happily. But relations with the government have taken a sour turn as TRAI has attempted to bar Truecaller from displaying labels on the designated series.
Last February, TRAI designated these series as a way for banks and telemarketers with valid consent from users (for which guidelines are laid out) in the oft-amended Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018. This year, TRAI went a little further, adding draft language to the rules that would bar Truecaller from displaying spam warnings for calls on these authorised series.
In response to a TRAI order last year, Truecaller has already been showing green badges for calls from these series. However, after seeing over 1 lakh blocking actions on these numbers each day (and over 5 crore blocking actions collectively), the firm said it added a “Frequently Blocked” badge on some of these green badges.
Truecaller arguably fired a warning shot in April in their response to the draft requirement, saying in its response that the “proposed Regulation … may not withstand judicial review and ought to be deleted in its entirety”. TRAI reportedly asked the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for the authority to regulate caller ID apps, according to an article in a business daily.
This is when Truecaller chose to respond publicly. “This makes absolutely no sense,” Mr. Jhunjhunwala wrote on X. “We are the good actors who are helping hundreds of millions of Indians every day, including the vulnerable elderly, to have a trusted communication experience. Instead, they want to enable bad actors and give them an open playground to spam and scam us by censoring community information. We find this unacceptable. Penalize the bad actors, not the ones like Truecaller that make a significant positive impact.”
For its part, TRAI, which has not responded to a query for comment, has attempted to make the 140 and 160 series a legitimate channel and dissuade banks and telemarketers from using unregistered numbers to spam people. This, however, has not worked, Truecaller said.
“In the past 8 months, Truecaller users have ignored 81% of all 140-series calls and 79% of all 1600-series calls,” Mr. Jhunjhunwala said. “Some of these calls are of course legit, which Truecaller would have displayed with its verified badge and consumers would have answered these calls. Instead, consumers and legit businesses both lost out. It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone.”
In a separate instance, TRAI has attempted to replicate Truecaller’s functioning by mandating caller name presentation (CNAM or CNAP), where people can see the KYC-registered name of someone calling them.
Different government authorities have moved to regulate platforms in recent months, going beyond their usual remit. The Department of Telecommunications issued SIM-binding directions to WhatsApp last year, requiring the messaging platform to disallow accounts from working if the phone did not have a registered SIM inserted in the phone they are using the app on.
Meanwhile, the IT Ministry has asked WhatsApp and Truecaller to put their username feature on hold as it studies the implications phone number concealment may have on the spread and attributability of spam.
Published - July 09, 2026 12:12 pm IST