If you’ve noticed more spam calls flooding your phone in the last few months, you’re not imagining it. And here’s the uncomfortable part: the very system meant to protect you from spam is the reason it’s getting worse.
The Idea That Sounded Good on Paper
In late 2025, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) rolled out a plan to clean up commercial calling in India. Businesses making telemarketing calls were told to use numbers starting with 140. Banks, NBFCs, insurers and other financial companies making service or transaction-related calls – think payment alerts, account updates – were told to use the 1600 series.
The logic was simple: if every business call comes from a clearly marked series, consumers can instantly tell what kind of call is coming in, and regulators can track and control it more easily. On paper, this looked like a smart, transparent system.
Then came the catch.
The Catch: You’re Not Allowed to Know
Alongside this numbering system, TRAI directed caller ID apps – Truecaller, Hiya, Whoscall – to stop showing any community-reported spam information on calls from these two series. In other words, even if lakhs of users flag a 140 or 1600 number as spam, apps are barred from showing you that warning.
Truecaller, which has spent 17 years building trust with hundreds of millions of Indian users through crowd-sourced spam identification, was suddenly told to go silent on exactly the numbers most likely to be misused.
Truecaller flagged this concern to TRAI early on. What happened next proved the concern right.
The Numbers Tell the Story
Once spam warnings were switched off for the 140 and 1600 series, something predictable happened: spam calls through these very series exploded.
According to Truecaller’s own data – which the company says it is prepared to share with regulators – over 51 million calls from the 140 and 1600 series go unanswered every single day. People simply stopped picking up, because they had no way to tell a genuine call from a scam one anymore.
Over the past eight months, Truecaller users have ignored:
81% of all 140-series calls
79% of all 1600-series calls
Some of these were undoubtedly legitimate business calls – the kind that would normally carry Truecaller’s verified badge and get answered. Instead, both consumers and honest businesses ended up losing out. Nobody won.
The 1600 series, meant strictly for banking and transaction alerts, has been hit especially hard. Daily blocking actions against 1600-series numbers have more than tripled since October 2025. In total, Indians have manually blocked 7.4 crore (74 million) calls from these two series in the past eight months alone. Right now, users are blocking roughly 4 lakh calls a day from the 140 series and 1.25 lakh calls a day from the 1600 series – by hand, one call at a time, because the app itself isn’t allowed to warn them.
Truecaller’s Workaround
Faced with this, Truecaller built something new: a “Frequently Blocked” badge. If a 1600-series number has been blocked by a large number of people, Truecaller now surfaces that signal – without technically marking it as “spam” in red, which would violate TRAI’s directive. It’s a workaround, not a fix, and it exists only because the company wasn’t allowed to do the one thing it does best: warn people using real, community-verified data.
For its part, Truecaller says it has stayed compliant throughout – even when it disagreed. The company has stated that it doesn’t spam-tag or auto-block any designated-series number, and that even when its systems detect a number receiving lakhs of spam reports, it holds back from labelling it, purely to follow TRAI’s mandate.
Now It Could Get Worse
Just when it seemed like things couldn’t get more restrictive, TRAI has asked the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) to be designated an “authorised agency” under the IT Act – a status that would give it direct power to act against caller ID apps like Truecaller, Hiya and Whoscall. Currently, these apps fall outside TRAI’s jurisdiction because they’re treated as intermediaries under the IT Act, not as licensed telecom operators. This request has reportedly received in-principle backing from MeitY, with the Department of Telecommunications expected to take the next step.
If this goes through, reports suggest it could go even further – proposals on the table would stop apps from showing any information at all on 140 and 1600 numbers, not just spam labels. There’s also talk of draft rules that could strip these apps of legal safe-harbour protections if they block, filter, or tag calls from these series – though this part is still developing and hasn’t been confirmed across the board.
Industry groups like IAMAI have reportedly pushed back too, arguing TRAI doesn’t have the authority here in the first place – that apps like Truecaller answer to MeitY and IT law, not telecom regulations.
Why This Matters to You
Strip away the regulatory jargon, and here’s what this actually means for the average person: the system built to protect you from spam has been told to look the other way on two entire categories of numbers – and scammers have clearly noticed. Meanwhile, the tool millions of Indians rely on daily, especially elderly and vulnerable users who depend on it to know who’s really calling, is being pushed toward silence rather than being strengthened.
Truecaller has said it’s willing to hand over all its data to MeitY, the same way it did with TRAI, so any final decision is at least based on evidence rather than assumption. Whether that happens and what MeitY ultimately decides – will shape how safe your phone feels for a long time to come.
Also Read: Ayodhya’s Yogendra Became ‘Abdul’ In Ahmedabad After Love Marriage; SOG Uncovers Passport Fraud https://www.vibesofindia.com/ayodhyas-yogendra-became-abdul-in-ahmedabad-after-love-marriage-sog-uncovers-passport-fraud/
