Truecaller Rolls Out New Version After Bug Signed Up Users For UPI Without Consent

Popular caller ID app Truecaller, on Tuesday, admitted to a bug on its platform that signed up users for UPI accounts with ICICI Bank without seeking their consent.

This came to light after some users raised concerns after receiving messages from ICICI Bank informing them of the UPI account.

Truecaller attributed it to a bug which affected the payments features in India only and automatically triggered a registration after updation.

“This was a bug and we have discontinued this version of the app so no other users will be affected,” it said in a statement, adding that it has already rolled out a fix in a new version.

Dilip Asbe, Managing Director and CEO, NPCI, said there was a problem in the app, and user on-boarding on the app has been stopped until it is fixed.

“This is enrolling mistake by the app without customer consent. With this, customer can’t do any UPI transaction. For onboarding to UPI, the customer has to still enter 2FA (issuer OTP and debit card) and set UPI pin. The workflow mistake is limited to enrolling, which will not have any impact on any customer account whatsoever.”

Truecaller is a popular app downloaded by users on smartphones to identify unknown calls or block spam text messages.

On Tuesday, Twitter user Dheeraj Kumar @codepodu said Truecaller automatically sent an encrypted SMS from his phone to an unknown number, following which he received a message from ICICI Bank that the registration for UPI app has started. This happened after a few apps on his android phone, including Truecaller, were updated.

Some other users on Twitter also tweeted of the same problem.

Truecaller said the new version of the app with the fix will be available shortly for the affected users. In the meantime, users can manually de-register their UPI ID from the banking/payments settings on the app.