Phone scams and hoaxes have multiplied. Telemarketers are out of control, and many users share true horror stories with dozens of daily calls. The first trick they use in these "campaigns" is to use very strange numbers, with formats we have never seen before. If you want to know who's calling you with an unknown number, all arrows point to Truecaller, the number one app on the market for identifying odd numbers and blocking spam calls.
If your phone is relatively modern, it most likely has some mechanism to block spam calls and try to identify the number of the caller. Its availability depends both on the model and the version of the operating system, but if it exists in the settings, you should definitely take advantage of it.
The alternative is to download an app, with all the pros and cons that entails. The most popular on the market is Truecaller, which has been on the market for several years and has accumulated millions of downloads on both Android and iOS. Its latest version is available in both stores without restrictions, or you can download the APK directly from its official page if you wish.
Truecaller: The number one app to know who's calling you with an unknown number
The first thing we need to understand about Truecaller is that the information doesn't arise by magic, and there's no "Hackerman" in the background discovering numbers. The app relies on a community spam list generated with the help of more than 250 million users, and that means one thing: you must share data with the app.
Immediately after installation, Truecaller asks for permission to manage phone calls and SMS messages, in addition to accessing your contact list. The developers of Truecaller repeat over and over that they protect the information, and that our contacts will not be public or available to search engines. Considering that many of its users are already being bombarded daily by unknown numbers, the conditions seem reasonable... from a certain point of view.
The second step is to confirm the phone number, a system similar to what WhatsApp uses to activate accounts. Keep in mind that if you accumulate many failures during the verification process, Truecaller will start a 24-hour cooldown. The last phase serves as a mini tutorial that explains what you can do with Truecaller, but the important thing is that it stays running in the background.
When you receive a call from someone not in your contacts, the app will try to identify its origin. I say "try" because Truecaller is not perfect, and phone numbers are a constantly moving target. What to do after identifying an unknown number? I guess you could return the call, but most likely you'll want to block it permanently so it doesn't bother you anymore. The free edition of Truecaller is funded by advertising, however, it disappears once you enter one of its subscriptions.
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