Saturday 6 June 2020

Truecaller data of 47 million Indians breached, company denies

Security report suggest data of popular caller ID app Truecaller was leaked. That’s not all, it says the data was listed for sale for $1000 (Rs 75,000 approx) on the darkweb. The data of over 47 million Indian users on the platform has raised concerns among people. Truecaller, however denied the allegations of data breach.


“Thank you for bringing this to our attention. There has been no breach of our database and all our user information is secure. We take the privacy of our users and the integrity of our services extremely seriously. And we are continuously monitoring for suspicious activities,” Truecaller statement said.


The report from Cyble, a cyber security firm explained the, “Truecaller data is from 2019 and the information available on the dark web has been categorised based on states, cities and carriers.” It also pointed out the leaked data consisted of user details like phone number, carrier, name, gender, email address, Facebook ID and more.


What Truecaller had to say


To this, Truecaller mentioned, “we were informed about a similar sale of data in May 2019. What they have here is likely the same data set as before.” And Cyble seems to have admitted this possibility. “At this point, we have no evidence whatsoever suggesting that Truecaller was hacked in 2019 or recently,” it adds.


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Truecaller alleges that some bad actors are trying to use its popularity by creating a data set and adding its name to the compiled list. “It’s easy for bad actors to compile multiple phone number databases and put a Truecaller stamp on it. By doing that, it lends some credibility to the data and makes it easier for them to sell.”  It believes this a classic case of attackers trying to steal money from possible victims and asks them to wary of such data.