South African telemarketers say Truecaller is killing business

702 and CapeTalk’s Africa Melane speaks with Rosalind Lake, Director at Norton Rose Fulbright. 

Listen below:

The Information Regulator confirms several local companies have laid complaints against the Truecaller app for violating the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).

The mobile app helps users identify unknown calls and acts as a spam blocker.

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It relies on user input and access to users' contact lists and call logs to build its database.

Companies say this harms their businesses as it flags their numbers and charges them a fee to be whitelisted. 

In April 2025, the app surpassed 450 million active users worldwide.

“Direct marketing has been a real focus for the Information Regulator… they’re going to have to check to see whether Truecaller’s practices follow the eight conditions set out in POPIA.”

– Rosalind Lake, Director – Norton Rose Fulbright

The conditions are accountability, processing limitation, purpose specification, further processing limitation, information quality, openness, security safeguards, and data subject participation. 

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Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the discussion.