Privacy, security or trust concerns not confined by national borders: Nami Zarringhalam

As companies are no longer confined by national borders, neither are privacy, security or trust concerns, Nami Zarringhalam, cofounder of Truecaller, said at the summit on Saturday.

“They are increasingly becoming main topics of discussions and regulations, which unless done internationally and in collaboration, inevitably leads to fragmentation of the globally optimistic and unifying nature of the internet,” Zarringhalam said.

He added that Truecaller has thousands of business partners globally for its verified business partner programme. This is a service provided by Truecaller to large enterprises where the platform verifies their

phone numbers for the safety and trust of those businesses and their customers.

He, however, emphasised that data is not shared with these partners and users have complete control of their information.

Zarringhalam also spoke extensively about the increasing role of artificial intelligence (AI), especially among thieves, fraudsters and charlatans.

“If you haven’t been hit by it (digital frauds or AI scams), you will at some point,” he said. “We are now on the verge of something that is in equal parts - groundbreaking and terrifying. AI is here to stay
and we had best be prepared for all that it brings — good and bad.”

Zarringhalam said scammers have historically been the first adopters of the latest technologies, which includes AI as it allows for scalable business operations with little effort, low downsides and huge potential upsides. “Many know of Truecaller as the app that saves them from spam.

What few people may realise is that our services are AI-powered,” Zarringhalam explained. “Since almost four years back, we have been investing heavily in AI research and development which is powering
our capabilities, from industry leading instant detection of scam and spam to AI assistants answering calls on your behalf.”

He said all this research and development has been made possible thanks to Truecaller’s community of 368 million users who contribute by writing comments, editing names and marking numbers as spam every month.

“Digital identities are only important if we trust the platform providing it,” Zarringhalam said. “Once there is trust, the most common output is financial and job opportunities. Predictability and accountability in the social fabric of every society.

These are the benefits that community driven services bring when they have privacy, security and trust by design,” he said.