While TRIA’s suggestion to make caller identities visible during calls is a positive step in protecting the public from threatening, fraudulent, harassing, and spam calls, the concerns about the implementation of Caller Name Presentation is real and should be taken into consideration when putting this policy into practice.
The caller’s identity should be displayed to the call recipient by telecom companies, according to a proposal made by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRIA). Concerns regarding this proposal have been voiced by telecom carriers.
Currently, Caller Name Presentation is not supported by the Time-division multiplexing (TDM)-based interconnection between various telecom carriers.
The telecom providers claim that phones without 4G technology will not be able to support this technology.
Numerous devices, including feature phones and 4G network smart feature phones, will not support CNAP.
Customers who respect their privacy will be hard to convince or coerce to give their consent. Many people do not appreciate having their name shown when a consumer calls someone who is not in their immediate family.
The positive aspects
People will be able to identify who is phoning them so that they may decide with confidence.
People won’t need to rely on unreliable third-party apps like Truecaller, which uses crowdsourced data.
There is a risk that the personal information gathered by these third-party apps will be taken during a cyberattack. Truecaller was the target of a cyberattack in 2013.
It will be far more reliable because telecom providers would employ “Know Your Customer” (KYC) to display the true name of the caller. It will assist in defending people from threatening calls.
It will help people recognize and steer clear of bogus phone calls. It might lessen obscene and other unwanted calls.
The negative aspects
The majority of smartphone manufacturers and operating system developers are from foreign nations, and telecom operators are worried that they may steal this sensitive data using the CNAP capability.
These businesses can then abuse this data for their gain and to manipulate the market. These businesses can provide this data to their nations as well, which raises questions about data security.
Caller Name Presentation can also result in the wrongful use of a person’s personal mobile phone number by stalkers or other bad actors who will use it to find out a person’s name and other personal information. This raises privacy issues.
Especially for women, social and criminal difficulties may worsen as a result of people stalking on social media and other platforms using this information.