7million Nigerians at risk of Truecaller potential privacy rights breach – NITDA probes

The National Information Technology Agency (NITDA) has commenced investigation into the potential breach of privacy rights of  seven million Nigerians making use of Truecaller service.

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.

Initial findings revealed by the agency revealed that the Truecaller Privacy Policy is not in compliance with global laws on data protection and the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) in particular. The findings also revealed that there are over seven million Nigerians who are active users of the Service, hence the need to enlighten the public on some of the areas of non-compliance as well as guide those affected.

The press statement made available reads,”The attention of the National Information Technology Agency (NITDA) has been drawn to the potential breach of privacy rights of Nigerians by the Truecaller Service. The Agency, in accordance with Section 6(f) of the NITDA Act 2007, which empowers the it to render advisory services in all information technology matters to the public and private sectors, wish to inform the public that it commences investigation of the potential breach.”

The agency in its statement assured Nigerians of its commitment to monitor the activities of digital service providers and protect against the breach of rights of Nigerians.

It added that,”the provisions of the policy can be exploited to put many Nigerians in unsavoury conditions and advised members of the public to delist themselves from the Truecaller Service completely.”

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” 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.”

The agency also reiterated its commitment to improving the operational environment to support ethical players in their bid to get maximum benefit from Nigeria.