Truecaller Introduces AI-Powered Fraud Protection Feature to Combat SMS Fraud

There has been a rise in SMS fraud lately, with users receiving messages that claim to be from authentic banks or businesses and which, more often than not, advise users to click a link. Unsuspecting individuals who believe the message is legitimate end up clicking the link, thereby getting duped of their money from their banks.

To combat this, Truecaller has introduced a Fraud Protection feature that uses machine learning to recognize fraudulent messages and alert users. While Truecaller already had a feature to detect spam messages earlier, it relied primarily on community-driven feedback.

Truecaller has said that over the 100 million users who use their app, each of them would have received at least one fraudulent message. Unlike spam, these are malicious and can range from electricity bill payments, banks, job offers, KYC-related, loans, charity, or lottery.

Truecaller claims the Fraud Protection feature intelligently recognizes fraudulent senders and messages. The company also claims the system is designed to detect new forms of fraud without explicit user reportage.

When the Fraud Protection feature identifies a message as fraudulent on the user's device, Truecaller marks it with a red notification to warn the user not to open it. The notification remains on the screen until dismissed by the user.

But, if the user accidentally opens the SMS, to add another layer of security, Truecaller will disable any links in the message to prevent any accidental clicking. Only when the user marks the sender as safe will the app allow the user to access the message.

Truecaller claims that it does not upload any messages and that all messages remain locally on the user's device. The Fraud Protection feature is free and has been rolled out to all Android users in India using Truecaller.

While this feature is currently being launched in India, Truecaller has said it plans to launch the feature in other markets as well.

Source: Truecaller