Truecaller CEO explains why spam is on the rise, warns it’s not over yet — ‘It’s actually going to get worse’ | Today’s news

If your phone has been ringing constantly with unknown calls from 140 and 1600 numbers lately, you’re not alone. And according to Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala, this influx of unwanted calls is actually going to get worse.

Truecaller is a leading global communication platform that helps users identify spam and scam calls.

“Wondering why there has been a SIGNIFICANT increase in spam calls in India recently? Well, it’s actually going to get worse,” Jhunjhunwala said in a lengthy X post, explaining that a mandate from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to limit community spam reporting inadvertently triggered a massive increase in missed calls, spam and manual blocking across the country.

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Mandate for numbers 140 and 1600

In 2025, TRAI mandated that businesses contact consumers using specific numbers: 140 for telemarketing calls and 1600 for BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) companies making service or transaction-related calls “with the intention of controlling calls using these dedicated numbers”.

However, Jhunjhunwala said the telecom agency has simultaneously ordered Truecaller not to display any community-reported spam information for these numbers. This mandate restricted Truecaller from displaying “any 140 and 1600 numbers as spam”.

“It looked very strange from our point of view,” he said.

51 million missed calls every day

When spam filters were essentially disabled for these series, Jhunjhunwala said, “The number of spam calls made through the 140/1600 range skyrocketed!”

Truecaller reported that more than 51 million calls from 140 and 1600 numbers go unanswered every day.

“There has been a massive increase in the amount of spam and scam calls reported by the Truecaller community,” the CEO said, adding that despite this, Truecaller is not required to notify its users that these calls are spam.

“It happened in front of our eyes and we have a duty not to tell our users that these calls are spam,” he said.

Read also | 76% of Indian consumers prefer phone calls to digital channels: Report

‘Lack of Trust’

As users no longer receive spam alerts, Jhunjhunwala said, “People have stopped answering calls from 140/1600 numbers because of a lack of trust.”

Over the past eight months, Truecaller users ignored 81% of all 140-series calls and 79% of all 1600-series calls, he wrote.

Calling it a “lose-lose situation,” he said that if Truecaller displayed a verified badge on legitimate communications from these series, consumers would not ignore genuine calls.

Manual blocking 7.4 million

Truecaller has tripled daily block actions (+208%) on the 1600 series since October 2025, dedicated to service/transactional calls.

In the last eight months alone, Jhunjhunwala said, Indians have taken 7.4 million (74 million) manual blocking actions against these numbering ranges. Truecaller users are now actively blocking 4,000,000 140 series calls and 1.25,000,000 1600 series calls per day.

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“Often Blocked” badge.

To fulfill its mission of creating trusted communications between consumers and legitimate businesses without violating mandate restrictions, Truecaller implemented a solution.

Jhunjhunwala said the app has created a “Frequently Blocked” badge. “If a 1600 number is blocked by many people, we will publish this information – but not mark it as spam (red on Truecaller).”

Impending regulations

Jhunjhunwala cited reports that TRAI is asking the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for the power to “regulate caller ID applications so that they do not display any information at all on 140/1600 numbers”.

Truecaller’s CEO decries the potential move, saying it “makes absolutely no sense” to censor the community’s information. He warned that this would provide “bad actors with an open playing field for fraudulent users”, including the vulnerable elderly.

“We find this unacceptable,” he said, sharing Truecaller’s plans to share its data with MeitY and calling on the ministry to make decisions based on data and punish bad actors rather than platforms that have a positive impact.