According to a source, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will soon start taking steps to ensure that a caller’s identity shows on the recipient’s phone screen while the call or ringing is happening. According to the Financial Express story, the name would be added based on the Know Your Customer (KYC) information that the caller provided.
This initiative by India’s telecom regulatory authority will come as a major relief to a huge chunk of the population for a variety of reasons. We’ve all heard instances of people being pranked or worse, being scammed, and losing out on money because of calls from fraudsters. Even though this move by TRAI will not necessarily eliminate all phone scams, it will limit people’s exposure to such incidents.
Once this move is implemented, a (call) receiver will be able to see the name of the caller as per the latter’s KYC record submitted to the telecom operator, even if the caller’s name is not saved on his/her phone.
As of now, applications such as Truecaller provide identity of the caller, but because the data collected by Truecaller is based on crowdsourcing, the authenticity of the data cannot be verified. Moreover, people also have the option to delink their number from the Truecaller directory. Therefore, such platforms cannot be completely trusted or verified. TRAI’s initiative is expected to overcome this hurdle.
According to sources, some groups opposed to the idea of TRAI saying that this would amount to invasion of privacy, said FE report. But TRAI has brushed aside such objections. The FE report also says after concluding the consultations, TRAI will submit its recommendations to Department of Telecommunications that would take the final decision.
