Is true caller is safe to use?

True caller is a application which change the way we recive our call, you can aclutally know that who called you, who sms you and safety from the telephone trolls, the concept is very good a open phonebook for everyone and in a perfect world it can be very useful.

The unique ability of true caller is very useful to normal user, but unfortunately the process is two way, you can search a person a by number and person can get your detail by name or number, and then use the internet calling card or pay phones to harass you. 

wheather you use truecaller or not you always qualify for the later case as the way truecaller work is that they upload your phone book "secularly" on their servers and then share the information with other users who are using true caller, and even if you are not using true caller, some of your more trendy friend might be using it and already shared your contact information with true caller. So should you install true caller? what the heck, your information has been compromised anyway! right? WRONG.

Truecaller is a application which don't only upload your telephone book but also need lots and lots of permission on your phone (as google and microsoft do, yes if they want they can have full control of your phone). Here is the information what they need, their explanation of needing it and its possible sideeffect. 

Permissions:
- Approximate location (network-based): Required to provide relevant ads for non-premium users.
- Receive/Read your text messages (SMS or MMS): Required to identify the sender.
- Full network access: Required to communicate with Truecaller servers and perform searches.
- View network and Wi-Fi connections: Required to check if the device has an active connection.
- Receive data from Internet: Required to receive push notifications.
- Directly call phone numbers: Required to perform calls directly from Truecaller.
- Read phone status and identity: Required to detect events like incoming calls, answering calls and ending calls.
- Reroute outgoing calls: Required to perform searches during outgoing calls.
- Modify phone state: Required to block calls and SMS from spammers.
- Modify or delete the contents of your USB storage: Required to save the profile picture together with the ones of the other found people.
- Disable your screen lock and prevent device from sleeping: Required to show the Caller Id window during incoming calls and to receive push notifications when the device has the screen locked.
- Modify your contacts: Required to save contacts in the phone book.
- Read your contacts: Required to check if a number exists in the phone book for caller ID to work.
- Read/Write call log: Required to read and erase the call log.
- Find accounts on the device: Required to receive push notifications.

- Control vibration: Required to notify the receipt of new notifications. 

Lots of applications need lots of permission on your phone but some needed by true callers are really alarming, I don't say that true caller will use that information for any reason other than provide you contact information, but as history says their servers are not so secure. There where reports of truecaller server got hacked, and hacker can get any data you have uploaded and if they get compromise more, hacker can get lots more access to your telephone.

Truecaller application was kicked out off google store before because they were uploaded the contact information for public sharing, and now they claim that they don't do it now and yes now they don't do it because google play store and apple store prohibits them from doing so, hence the enhanced search version is not available on google and iphone  if you are using the version downloaded from the play store or apple store, but you can still download a version from their side get the enhanced search enabled, which will upload your full phone book on their servers, and make it available to public. Quoting from true caller FAQ

• What is Enhanced Search?
  By enabling this feature, Truecaller boosts your search experience with more information and better accuracy on hundreds of millions of phone numbers! This allows Truecaller to securely send names and phone numbers in your phonebook to Truecaller, which may be made searchable by others (available only for Windows, BlackBerry, Symbian and s40).

  Please note that Android & iPhone users do not have the ability to collaborate their phonebook. By enabling Enhanced Search for Android or iPhone, this will only populate the results based on your circle of friends. We need to securely access and store your phone numbers (meaning no names and addresses). Your information will not be shared or accessed by anyone but Truecaller.

There was a reason iphone and android stores offer tonedown version of truecaller, but still gives away lots of control, so it's upto you. Truecaller might be a great application in a perfect world, but in this world it comes at a price of giving away your privacy and control of your most beloved device, your phone. True caller business does not work from making this world better their business works by providing adds or charge premium of using their application, so it is just one more company wants to make money in the app market business. 

So if you still want to go ahead and install it, just think what you might be giving up can how it can affact you and analyse it risk and if you thing that the risk that you will get affected by its side effect is very very less, you should watch this video.