After more than a decade of building its caller identification platform for more than 500 million users, Truecaller is expanding its focus from phone calls to the broader world of online scams.

The Swedish company has launched Scam Checker, a new web and Android service that allows people to investigate suspicious phone numbers, links, and messages without installing the main Truecaller app or creating an account.

Scam Checker Brings Fraud Detection to the Web

With Scam Checker, users can paste a suspicious phone number, website link, or message into the service to check whether it may be associated with fraudulent activity.

The tool draws on reports collected through Truecaller’s community-driven ScamFeed. However, more detailed information about a phone number, including the identity associated with it, remains part of Truecaller’s existing service and requires users to sign in.

The service will initially launch in India, with plans to expand into Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Checking Links and Messages

Scam Checker is designed to analyze more than traditional phone numbers.

When a user submits a link, the system can expand shortened URLs, follow redirects, and identify the final destination. It then compares the destination against Truecaller’s proprietary risk database and other fraud indicators.

Users can also submit an entire suspicious message. Scam Checker can identify relevant phone numbers or links inside the message and use Truecaller’s community reports to provide additional information.

Truecaller’s Community Is a Key Source of Data

The company's crowdsourced ScamFeed has become an important part of its fraud-detection strategy.

Truecaller says approximately 20,000 scam reports are currently available on ScamFeed in India, with roughly 1,300 additional reports being added each week.

Between September 14 and 20, the company also says it analyzed approximately 12.9 billion messages globally and identified 20.3 million of them as fraudulent.

That information gives Truecaller a continuously updated picture of the scams circulating among users.

Scams Are Moving Beyond Phone Calls

Truecaller’s expansion comes as fraudulent activity increasingly spreads across multiple communication channels.

Scammers now use SMS, messaging applications, websites, links, and voice calls to reach potential victims.

A 2025 GSMA survey of Indian adults who reported being scammed found that 46% said they were approached through messaging apps, while 37% reported SMS contact and 32% said they were targeted through voice calls.

The figures highlight why relying exclusively on caller identification is becoming less sufficient for detecting modern scams.

People Already Search for Suspicious Links

Truecaller estimates that people conduct approximately 14 million web searches each month related to suspicious phone numbers and links.

The company reached that estimate by analyzing search activity and traffic directed toward existing verification services.

CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala said this behavior helped influence the design of Scam Checker. People often encounter questionable content somewhere else, such as WhatsApp or a forwarded message, and then leave that service to search the web for confirmation.

Scam Checker is intended to place Truecaller’s verification tools directly into that process.

Scam Checker Could Also Strengthen Truecaller’s Business

The new service could provide benefits beyond helping individual consumers.

The reports and information collected through Scam Checker can give Truecaller greater insight into which scams are becoming active and how they are spreading.

That information could potentially support the company's fraud and risk-management products offered to businesses through Truecaller for Business.

Truecaller says, however, that Scam Checker itself is primarily designed as a consumer product.

More Detection Features Are Planned

Truecaller intends to expand Scam Checker’s capabilities over time.

The company plans to increase the range of scams the service can identify and is also working on the ability to upload screenshots for additional analysis.

That could make the tool more useful for situations where suspicious content appears as an image rather than as directly copyable text or a link.

India Remains a Critical Market

Truecaller’s move beyond caller ID comes as its traditional business faces increasing competition and changes in India, which remains its largest market with more than 350 million users.

Telecom operators are introducing the government-backed Calling Name Presentation service, while Apple and Google have continued developing their own caller identification and spam-protection features.

India’s telecom regulator has also ordered caller-identification applications to share user-submitted spam reports with telecom operators. Truecaller has criticized that arrangement, describing it as a “one-way exchange.”

The Company Is Expanding Beyond Caller ID

Truecaller’s strategy is therefore gradually shifting from identifying unknown callers toward providing broader protection against scams across multiple communication channels.

Caller ID remains central to the company's identity, but scams increasingly move between phone calls, messages, links, voice, and video.

The company's new direction reflects that change, with Scam Checker extending its fraud intelligence beyond the traditional caller-ID experience and onto the open web.