Truecaller CEO Says 5.25 Lakh People Flag Calls From 1600, 140 Series as Spam Everyday

Spammers use phone numbers starting with 1600 and 140 to target people in violation of telecom regulator Trai's direction, Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala said on Friday, and cited data that 5.25 lakh users of the caller identification app label such calls as spam daily.

The remarks came after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) issued a fresh direction, restraining the practice of tagging, filtering or blocking of calls from phone numbers starting with 1600 and 140.

Trai clarified that promotional calls originating from 140 number series cannot be tagged or filtered by an app and can only be blocked by the DND registry.

The Truecaller CEO said that spammers take advantage of the Trai rule and use these number series to prey on their targets.

"Trai has issued a press release, reiterating that 1600 and 140 series calls cannot be marked as spam by anyone. This is exactly what is leading to the surge in spam from those series! The data proves without a doubt that spammers are abusing this directive. Why not let us mark numbers from these series as spam if 5.25 lakh people are telling us that it is spam, every single day?" Jhunjhunwala said in a social media post on Friday.

The regulator said that it has mandated the use of 1600 series numbers for service and transaction calls by banking, financial services and insurance entities regulated by RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA for reaching out to their customers, as well as by government entities for government-to-citizen communication.

The key objective of assigning designated series for these important communications is to make such calls trustworthy for the citizens, Trai said.

On calls starting with the 140 number series, Trai said that it is meant for use by registered telemarketers.

"The customers have the right to allow or block promotional calls originating from 140 series numbers from entities of any or all sectors by registering their preference on the Do Not Disturb (DND) registry," Trai said.

The regulator said that a customer who has blocked any or all sectors from receiving promotional calls on the DND registry will not receive calls from the 140 series originating from entities of the blocked sectors.

"The customer can register his/her DND preference through multiple means, including through TRAI DND app. Any tagging or filtering of calls from 140 series numbers is not allowed except for blocking on the DND registry, as any tagging can mislead a customer who has otherwise allowed receipt of such calls from a sector on the DND registry," Trai said.

The clarification from Trai implies that customers will not be able to tag calls from numbers starting with 1600 and the 140 number series as spam, fraud, or any other category.

Jhunjhunwala on Wednesday said there has been a huge increase in spam calls through 140 and 1600 number series.

At present, Truecaller users actively block 4 lakh calls from the 140 series and 1.25 lakh calls from the 1600 series every day, he said, adding that the number of spam calls made through the 140/1600 number series skyrocketed with over 5.1 crore calls from both series going unanswered every single day.

Specifically with the 1600 series, reserved for service/transaction related calls, we have seen daily blocking actions tripled (up by 208 per cent) since October 2025. A total of 7.4 crore (74 million) manual blocking actions have been taken against these series in the past 8 months," Jhunjhunwala said in his earlier post