Android Truecaller alternative?

6pack

6pack

ex-Mod
Is there a truecaller alternative which is open source or doesn't sell our data? I tried some foss caller id app from Fdroid but it didn't show any caller id or info.
 
It is unlikely there will ever be one. But I do hope it does come about. The whole purpose of the app is to verify the indentity, which will mean that it will harvest contact data. And doing that will need money. And lots of us do not want to pay.

There is something called Hiya (bundled with Samsung devices), but I don't know how effective it is, or how safe it is.

The problem is the vicious cycle, for it to be effective, it needs penetration, for that it cannot be paid, if it is not paid, then it needs to sell data to survive.

And the advertising sh*t goes on.

Can we at TE come together and build something like that? Open Source?
 
There is an open source app on Fdroid - yet another call blocker. It takes the data from some closed source app (should I answer on Play Store). I tried it and it doesn't work for Indian phone numbers.

Just need to fork it and make it work with an India specific db. Probably GitHub or some other Google cloud based solution to host the db. Most isp's cache Google services so downloads will be faster.
 
6pack said:
There is an open source app on Fdroid - yet another call blocker. It takes the data from some closed source app (should I answer on Play Store). I tried it and it doesn't work for Indian phone numbers.

Just need to fork it and make it work with an India specific db. Probably GitHub or some other Google cloud based solution to host the db. Most isp's cache Google services so downloads will be faster.
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It doesn't work well imho. For that, they would need funding. I tried it in several countries (outside the US), and it never really worked for me. On a side note, I love OSS, and as much as possible support the devs by buying their stuff or donating to them.
 
6pack said:
There is an open source app on Fdroid - yet another call blocker. It takes the data from some closed source app (should I answer on Play Store). I tried it and it doesn't work for Indian phone numbers.

Just need to fork it and make it work with an India specific db. Probably GitHub or some other Google cloud based solution to host the db. Most isp's cache Google services so downloads will be faster.
Click to expand...
Are there any India specific blocklist db available anywhere ?
 
When I was earlier on mi.. The native dialer used to identify spam and block like truecaller

Dont other manufacturers provide something similar?
 
msankadi said:
When I was earlier on mi.. The native dialer used to identify spam and block like truecaller

Dont other manufacturers provide something similar?
Click to expand...

I have a Mi phone and its inconsistent. Lot of numbers which were spam didnt get flagged probably because they were new numbers.
I believe they work on manual reporting than database. More people report, more likely for a number to be labeled spam
 
ibose said:
Are there any India specific blocklist db available anywhere ?
Click to expand...
i've seen some truecaller db's selling for 999/-. It's for business accounts etc. Very specific type of db from truecaller. And its whole of india. So it's probably in MB's. Even if it was bought, then it would be useless on phone because of size. We would need to put it in a mysql db and use the phone app to query the db for every number and it will become complicated and expensive fast as more users start using server resources. not a job for a single person or a forum.
 
puns said:
I have a Mi phone and its inconsistent. Lot of numbers which were spam didnt get flagged probably because they were new numbers.
I believe they work on manual reporting than database. More people report, more likely for a number to be labeled spam
Click to expand...
Google Phone app is also one of them (only bummer is it heavily relies on its search db and identify most of the businesses but not the third-parties which are not listed or mentioned anywhere)

Its blocking is considerably consistent (read earlier bummer as exception)
 
Simply put : NONE :) Deal with truecaller or you're on your own. The paid version is great. It's a Swedish app. I can't expect anything better than it honestly.
 
I have a mi phone a Nokia phone and samsung phone .
Of late I find the hiya callerid native to samsung somewhat better than the native miui callerid .
Google phone seems to be just at par with miui .
Just my bery limited experience .
Miui Mi 5 , MI Max 2 .
Google Nokia 6.1, 6.1plus .
Samsung s9,s9+,m31,f41 .
Cheers Ankush .
 
Unfortunately, you wouldn't get better results than Truecaller on other apps. At least on iOS, you can disable every permission and allow it to access the net to only lookup individual numbers which are again stored offline along with the offline database of spam numbers.
 
I am on Full DND and I still tend to get 3-5 spam calls every week. I don't use call blocking (considered Truecaller few years back but then gave up when read that their DB are sold) and choose to ignore most of those pesky calls. My worry was more around SMS and for some reason the Full DND made no difference to the amount of junk I was getting. Tried a number of apps but finally stuck to this which has helped me roll my own effective blocklist over the years. The app is not updated and is an abomination when it comes to colors and usage and needs to be made as the default SMS app. But it was the only one could get the job done completely. The positives include many useful features like whitelisting, partial text matching, etc and the blocklist is in SQLite format so can be manipulated easily. It does allow call blocking as well but never used it.
 
ibose said:
I am on Full DND and I still tend to get 3-5 spam calls every week. I don't use call blocking (considered Truecaller few years back but then gave up when read that their DB are sold) and choose to ignore most of those pesky calls. My worry was more around SMS and for some reason the Full DND made no difference to the amount of junk I was getting. Tried a number of apps but finally stuck to this which has helped me roll my own effective blocklist over the years. The app is not updated and is an abomination when it comes to colors and usage and needs to be made as the default SMS app. But it was the only one could get the job done completely. The positives include many useful features like whitelisting, partial text matching, etc and the blocklist is in SQLite format so can be manipulated easily. It does allow call blocking as well but never used it.
Click to expand...
Have you tried Microsoft SMS Organizer. It has a pretty good Spam filter, very like Gmail, and works quite flawlessly.
 
Yes I had tried it years back and while it had some nifty features like formatting your e-tickets it kept notifying even for some of the spam and did not have the ability to export/import the spam filter db. Maybe I will look at it again.
 
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