Truecaller has launched Scam Checker, a free service that checks suspicious phone numbers, links, and messages without requiring users to sign in or download its caller ID app. The Swedish company is extending its scam-detection tools beyond phone calls as fraud increasingly reaches users through messaging apps, SMS, and web links.
The launch follows more than a decade of building Truecaller’s caller ID business, which now serves more than 500 million monthly users. Truecaller announced Scam Checker on September 28 as a web and Android service designed to help consumers assess possible scams.
Scam Checker Analyzes Links, Numbers and Messages
Users can paste information directly into Scam Checker, including a suspicious URL, phone number, or message. For links, the service expands shortened URLs, follows redirects to their final destination, and checks them against Truecaller’s proprietary risk database and other fraud signals.
When users submit a message, Scam Checker can identify links or phone numbers within it and surface related reports from Scamfeed, Truecaller’s crowdsourced scam-reporting community. More detailed phone-number information, including the name associated with a number, remains part of Truecaller’s existing signed-in service.
Truecaller said Scam Checker will initially be available in India, with expansion planned for Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and Southeast Asia. The service also provides another way for people who encounter suspicious content outside the Truecaller app to access its scam intelligence.
CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala said people often turn to web searches when suspicious content arrives through services such as WhatsApp or when friends and family forward questionable messages. Truecaller estimates that about 14 million web searches are made each month to verify suspicious links and phone numbers, based on its analysis of search traffic and existing verification services.
Community Reports Feed Scam Detection
Scamfeed currently has about 20,000 live scam reports in India, with roughly 1,300 new reports added each week. Between September 14 and 20, Truecaller said it evaluated 12.9 billion messages globally and flagged 20.3 million as fraudulent.
A 2025 GSMA survey of Indian adults found that 46% of respondents who reported being scammed were approached through messaging apps. SMS accounted for 37%, while voice calls represented 32%.
Truecaller plans to support more scam types and add screenshot uploads for further analysis. Its expansion beyond caller ID comes as India, where Truecaller has more than 350 million users, introduces the government-backed Calling Name Presentation service while Apple and Google continue adding their own caller identification and spam-protection tools.
India’s telecom regulator also recently ordered caller-ID apps to share user-submitted spam reports with telecom operators. Truecaller criticized the requirement as a “one-way exchange.”
“Caller ID was the first problem we solved, and it’s still how most people find us,” Jhunjhunwala said. “But scams moved to a more multi-channel approach with links and messages, and increasingly to voice and video. Our protection has to follow the scammer.”
Featured image credits: Wikimedia Commons
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