Why Truecaller enrolled users for its payments service without permission

Going by the complaints, on Tuesday, the latest version of Truecaller's Android app started signing up users for Truecaller Pay - the UPI-based payments service the company introduced in 2017.

The app initiated the UPI-registration process for the service (similar to Google Pay) and sent out messages to verify bank accounts associated with mobile numbers, without any permissions whatsoever.

Evidently, seeing UPI registration messages like "Your registration for UPI app has started. If it was not you, report now to your bank" wasn't well received by Truecaller users.

Some claimed that automatic registration was a clear breach of privacy, while others blamed the company for scamming users in a bid to get its hands on their UPI details.

As the complaints started flooding, Truecaller issued a statement blaming the issue on a bug that affected the payments feature and "automatically triggered a registration."

"This was a bug and we have discontinued this version (v10.41.6) of the app so no other users will be affected," the company said, noting that "we're sorry about this version not passing our quality standards."

The company said the issue affected only a "small fraction of Truecaller's Android users" and a new version with the fix has been published on Google Play Store.

So, if you were affected by the bug, we recommend updating Truecaller to the latest version (v10.40.7).

Notably, Truecaller also said, "Any users who have been registered for UPI services will automatically be deregistered."