The National Information Technology Agency (NITDA) of Nigeria has announced that it is investigating a potential breach of privacy rights of Nigerians by Caller ID Service, TrueCaller.
Truecaller is a smartphone application which has features of caller-identification, call-blocking, flash-messaging, call-recording, Chat & Voice which uses the internet. The service requires users to provide a standard cellular mobile number for registering with the service.
National Information Technology Development Agency is a public service institution established by NITDA Act 2007 as the ICT policy implementing arm of the Federal Ministry of Communication of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
In a press statement released on Monday, NITDA says that it has commenced its investigation in accordance with section 6 (f) of the NITDA act 2007 which empowers it to render advisory services in all Information technology matters to the public and private sectors.
According to NITDA Director General/CEO of the agency, Kashifu Inuwa, “Initial findings revealed that the Truecaller privacy policy is not in compliance with global laws of data protection and the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) in particular.”
‘‘The Truecaller Privacy Policy is made of two sets – one for those in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the other for those outside the EEA. Nigeria falls under the second category. Furthermore, every Nigerian user is contracting with Truecaller India. There are marked differences between both policies. A critical assessment of the policy revealed non-compliance with the NDPR.
The NITDA DG/CEO listed three examples, one of which is stated below:
Part of Article 1.1 states that Truecaller may supplement the information provided by You with information from third parties and add it to the information provided by You.
NITDA says that “this provision contravenes Article 2.1(b) of the NDPR which requires data collection and processing to be accurate and Article 1.3(iii) which requires that valid consent must be specific. By supplementing the personal information of Nigerians without specific consent and accuracy, they are susceptible to serious invasion of their privacy. This has encouraged unscrupulous persons to continue using Nigerian identities to perpetuate fraud.”
NITDA estimates that over 7 million Nigerians use this service. Truecaller has also admitted that Nigeria is the second biggest market in Africa with over 2.9 million daily active users. Truecaller recently announced that it has crossed 500 million downloads and surpassed 150 million daily active users (DAUs) globally.
“In view of this, we urge all Nigerians to take advantage of Article 4 of the Truecaller Privacy Policy which provides “If any persons do not wish to have their names and phone numbers made available through the Enhanced Search or Name Search Functionalities, they can exclude themselves from further queries by notifying Truecaller via its website at www.Truecaller.com or as is set forth in the contact details below…” Members of the public may also decide to delist themselves from the service completely.”
NITDA assured Nigerians that it would continue to monitor the activities of digital service providers with a view to ensuring that the rights of Nigerians are not unduly breached while also improving the operational environment to support ethical players in their bid to get maximum benefit from Nigeria.
Innovation Village has contacted Truecaller for a response to the allegation and is currently awaiting feedback.
We have received an update from Truecaller – See below
Thanks for writing to us!
We became aware of this press statement issued by NITDA this evening. We would like to assure our users in Nigeria that users’ privacy is of utmost importance to Truecaller. We are in the process of reviewing the comments made by NITDA and will give more information on it very soon.