I was a little bemused this morning when a supposed security consultant blamed the gov't for the manner names appear on truecaller.
He wondered how a name like 'Baba' could come up when you dial a number. "How's Baba supposed to be someone's name?", he quizzed.
This ignorance was exhibited on a national Radio station during their breakfast show.
He thinks names registered on SIM are the names that come up during calls. He most likely thinks the gov't submit names to the app after registering citizens!
Many people are like this man who are innocently angry. They are sincerely wrong and promoting or exhibiting ignorance, albeit angrily!
Let's get to it...
Truecaller is just an app and I wonder if they have any affiliation specially to any country apart from the mandatory registration for owning and publishing an app for public use.
How the app works...
The moment you install on your phone and approve of the app accessing your phonebook, it goes straight there to capture numbers and how they are stored on your phone. It compares it with ways others store a particular number on their own phone and chooses the mostly used names.
The app can store a number as 'abesannews' if most people stored the number with that name, for example. In actual fact, most people end up saving a number on their phone with the name that pops up on truecaller. This does not mean that the owner of that number registered his SIM with 'abesannews'.
You can edit...
The app gives you an option to suggest another name for a number if you choose to. I suggest people do this often.
Your own number...
You have power over how your name appears if you have it installed on your phone.
I hope this puts paid to the misconception by people on the operation of this very useful app that helps prevent spam calls.
Olufemi Odeyemi, a Journalist and publisher of Abesan News writes from his base in Lagos, Nigeria.
No comments:
Post a Comment