How to block unwanted calls, find unknown caller phone number using Truecaller

Gone are the days when spam was only limited to the email boxes. Now regardless of which part of the world do you live, you get a lot of annoying phone calls and text messages advertising services, offering cheap stuff to buy, marketing calls, automated calls, silent phone calls and probably the stuff that you don’t even know what that means

Block unwanted calls

Now obviously this was a very difficult task to achieve on land-line phone numbers but with the invention of smart phones and mobile apps (Thanks to Steve Jobs of Apple Inc) somebody (truecaller) thought of making an international phone directory which would hold not only the names of people calling but it also maintains a list of suspected and established spammers. Now these could be text/SMS spammers or phone callers (call centers, payment protection spam, lottery spam or even automated call center spams etc).

So here is the solution. You go to your marketplace (Google Play or Apple iTunes) and search for truecaller. The app is available for both IOS and Android. It will look something like below.

Truecaller App

How truecaller Works:

Its main purpose is to identify a caller before you pickup the call so when somebody calls you, your phone starts ringing and displays the name of the caller if its saved in your mobile phone address book. If the number is not found in your address book, truecaller app is triggered and it searches its global directory to see if they have a match. Internet (3G/4G, wifi or whatever form of internet is available) is used for this search.

Phone number found using truecaller app

How it obtains caller details is even more interesting. I read somewhere that an estimated 16 million people are using truecaller mobile app either on iphones or android phones. When you download and register to use the app, you provide your name and location. That information is used when you call someone who has not added you to their phone address book and they have also installed truecaller app.

What this app also does is that they upload your address book to their server to add numbers to search results, this way you almost know every time a new caller calls you that who is calling you and you can decide what to do with that call.

How truecaller blocks spammers:

Now if we go with the above “16 million users” figure sending truecaller details of all the spammers, they are sure to have the most accurate database for spammers and other black listed phone numbers. What truecaller app then does is that they create a group in your address book and add those numbers which have been black listed by your geographical community to that group and ban that group in the phone so when a spammer calls you, they are sent directory to the voice mail or whatever and you don’t even get a notice that someone tried to call you and you get on with your life or whatever.

Block Numbers:

When the call ends, you have the option to either add the phone to the address book or mark it as spam. If you decide to mark the number as spam, it automatically gets added to the blocked callers group and after certain requests of blocking by other community users, truecaller adds that number to everyone’s block list. They do this when they send a new app update.

truecaller after call options

Search:

You can go to the mobile app and search for a name or number location wise. If someone specifically searches for your number without you calling them, you get a notification in your truecaller app that someone searched for your number. Now if you would like to know who did that search, you would have to upgrade to a premium version for $0.99 a month. At the writing time of this post, premium version of truecaller is only available for android devices. They say that premium version for Apple IOS is also on the way but there is no specific date for that yet.

Find a phone number using computer:

truecaller also have a version for computers. You just have to go to their website http://www.truecaller.com, login using scoial media services like facebook or twitter or even google etc and search using phone number and or name/location etc.

I hope this information was useful to you and please let us know your feedback on this guide.