Apps like Truecaller will have to stop providing services like caller line identification (CLI) for incoming calls once the government notifies the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) law in the next four to five months.
However, the government-backed CLI services, based on the subscribers’ know your customer (KYC) records, which is in the works, won’t get affected, official sources said.
Government officials said since the CLI service provided by Truecaller is crowd-sourced and involves using third-party personal data without the consent of the person concerned, it cannot continue once the DPDP law is notified. To illustrate: When a customer signs up with Truecaller, his/her entire phone book data gets shared with the app provider, helping the company build an enormous data base to provide CLI services.
However, the CLI services on which the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is currently working, will not get impacted as providing the same will become mandatory for service providers as part of the licensing norms and the consent of subscribers will be part of the KYC process while taking a mobile connection. After floating a consultation paper on the subject, Trai has completed the open house sessions and is now working on the recommendations in this regard. Once the recommendations are submitted to the government, the latter will take it forward.
Acknowledging that the CLI part of the business will get impacted with the DPDP coming into effect, Truecaller said that this category is a smaller part of its business. “Truecaller is prepared for a scenario where such data categories could be impacted by the new law and a small portion of the identified names may not be displayed. Even in such a case, Truecaller will still be able to provide a nearly equivalent user experience,” the company said in its analysis of the DPDP law.
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The company categorises the services provided by it into three broad categories, of which it says two will not get impacted. The first is calls from scammers, spammers and businesses, which represent approximately 40-45% of all calls, will not be impacted by the DPDP law, the company said.
The second category is calls from Truecaller users calling other Truecaller users, which according to the company represents approximately 40% of all calls. However, government officials point out that even if both parties are Truecaller users, several numbers in their phone books, which gets shared, may still be of people who are not the app’s subscribers.
Truecaller has more than 356 million users globally, of which more than 255 million are in India. According to the company, in India more than 50% of all connected smartphones use Truecaller regularly. The app is used for making calls, sending and receiving messages as well as identifying incoming calls.
The DPDP law empowers citizens to intimate to all digital platforms to delete their past data, which will act as a check on monetisation of consumer data by Big Tech firms.
The firms concerned will need to collect data afresh from users and spell out clearly its purpose and usage. They will be booked for data breach if they depart from the purpose for which it was collected.
Companies handling large volume of data will also have to appoint data protection officers, who will be the point of contact for the grievance redressal mechanism. Such entities will also have to appoint an independent data auditor.
Further, the onus of data breach as a result of theft by employees, etc, will lie with the company concerned and the Data Protection Board will levy the penalty on the company, the maximum amount of which has been fixed at `250 crore.
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