Yes! Truecaller database hacked. It has been reported that the database of Truecaller has been hacked by the hackers of Syrian Electronic Army. Also, the company has now stated this officially in their blog. Truecaller, however states that the hackers were unable to get access to users’ Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media passwords. But according to an earlier report, the hackers seem to have downloaded more than 7 databases of 450GB in size from Truecaller servers. The hackers also posted admin login credentials to Truecaller’s database on Twitter.
Truecaller database hacked – twitter!
Sorry @Truecaller, we needed your database, thank you for it 🙂 http://t.co/fC6ZyYAGTG#SEA#SyrianElectronicArmy
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA12) July 17, 2013
Database Host: http://t.co/RbaFR3eKJr | Username: tc_admin_login | Password: google123 | Database Name: truecaller_ugc #SEA@Truecaller
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA12) July 17, 2013
There’s this screenshot of the hacked database too from their Twitter account:
From the @TrueCaller Database #SEA#SyrianElectronicArmypic.twitter.com/sqUQpAGJQf
— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA12) July 17, 2013
For those who don’t know about Truecaller, it is an app that shows you details of a number that you got a call from, but it is unknown to you, and is not there in your phonebook. Now, to do this for you what the app does is that it takes whole of your phonebook on their servers and then help people that way. That is, if a number in your phonebook happens to call a person who doesn’t have it saved in their phone, the name and other info from your phonebook will be shown to him. Not only this, anyone can search for a number on their website and get details about that number. If you ask me, I have heard people telling me to get this app, but they were unaware of the working of Truecaller unlike me, so I never used it and also advised my those friends to not use it, but hardly anybody listened.
The issue with the app is that a person is not in control if their number is being shared on the service by one of their contact. The service does let you unlist any number from their database, but hardly anybody knows it and hardly anybody knows that their number is already up on the service for others to see. Also, we can’t be sure that Truecaller actually deletes our details from their database.
Truecaller claims to have a user base of 20 million and also that majority of these are from India. This is NOT a good thing. Having our personal details on the web open for all is a big threat to our privacy. About 1.6 million users are from India but this is the figure of people using the app, that means the number of records of Indian numbers is much higher than this.
It is my personal request and suggestion to anyone using the app to not use it, also, people who are concerned about their data being on the service can unlist their numbers from here: http://www.truecaller.com/unlist . At least in this way, your details won’t be available to others with.
