Truecaller has launched a new tool that allows users to check suspicious phone numbers, links and messages for possible scams without downloading its main app or creating an account.
The Swedish caller identification company introduced Scam Checker on Sunday as a web and Android service, initially making it available in India before plans to expand it to Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and Southeast Asia.
Users can paste a suspicious phone number, web link or message into the service. Scam Checker analyses submitted links by expanding shortened URLs, following redirects and comparing the final destination with Truecaller’s risk database and other fraud signals.
When users submit a message, the service can identify phone numbers or links within it and check for related reports from Truecaller’s community-powered ScamFeed.
More detailed information about a phone number, including the name associated with it, remains available through Truecaller’s existing service, which requires users to sign in.
The launch comes as online scams increasingly extend beyond traditional phone calls to SMS, messaging platforms and malicious web links. A 2025 GSMA survey of Indian adults found that among respondents who reported being scammed, 46% said they were approached through messaging apps, 37% through SMS and 32% through voice calls.
Truecaller estimates that about 14 million web searches are made each month to check suspicious phone numbers and links, a trend the company said helped inform the development of Scam Checker.
“When you need it, you’re usually somewhere else. The link shows up on WhatsApp. Your mum gets a message about a traffic fine. A friend forwards you a screenshot and asks, ‘Is this real?’” Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala told TechCrunch. “What people do in that moment is search.”
Truecaller said its ScamFeed currently contains about 20,000 scam reports in India, with around 1,300 new reports added each week. Between September 14 and 20, the company said it assessed 12.9 billion messages globally and identified 20.3 million as fraudulent.
The company plans to expand the types of scams the service can identify and introduce screenshot uploads for additional analysis.
The move also comes as Truecaller faces changes in India’s caller identification market. India’s telecom regulator recently required caller-ID and call-management apps to share user-submitted spam reports with telecom operators, while telecom networks and smartphone makers are expanding their own caller identification and spam protection systems.
“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.”
