India requires caller ID and call-management apps to share users' spam reports with telcos; Truecaller calls it a "one-way exchange" that is "anti-competitive" (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

India's telecom regulator, TRAI, has updated its anti-spam rules to require caller ID and call-management apps to share users' spam reports with telecom operators. These reports will be sent to a blockchain-based platform that tracks commercial communications and enforces anti-spam rules. The goal is to broaden the pool of spam reports available to take action against spammers.

The new rules have been criticized by Truecaller, a popular spam-blocking app, which claims that the requirement is a "one-way exchange" that is "anti-competitive". According to Truecaller, this transfers commercially valuable data from call-management apps to telecom operators. India is Truecaller's largest market, with over 350 million of its 500 million monthly active users.

Truecaller uses community reports, automated detection, and other signals to identify and block spam calls. The company argues that the new rules unfairly benefit telecom operators. TRAI says the change aims to connect reports collected by apps with the telecom industry's enforcement infrastructure.

Brief written by urgent.news from Techmeme, TechCrunch — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.