Privacy Policy

7. ANOQR Phone, Caller ID and the ANOQR Android app

ANOQR Phone (anoqr.com/chat) brings your calls, chats and contacts together, and ANOQR Caller ID tells you who is calling. Part of it runs in the ANOQR Android app, because a website cannot see or make phone calls; if you choose, the app also becomes your phone’s phone app. This section sets out exactly what that involves. All of it is free, and none of it is used for advertising.

What the Android app asks for

• Contacts — to bring your phonebook into your ANOQR account, and for the contact cleaner to merge or delete the duplicates you choose.
• Call log — to show your phone’s call history in the Calls tab.
• Phone — to place the calls you start in ANOQR, from the SIM you choose, and to tell your SIMs apart.
• Notifications — to show a call ringing in or in progress, and a caller’s name or a spam warning.
• Install updates (“Allow from this source”, asked once) — so the app from anoqr.com/app can download and install its own new versions. To check for one it asks anoqr.com for the latest version number; nothing about you is sent, and Android accepts only updates signed by ANOQR.
• Default phone app — an Android setting rather than a permission, and optional. It makes ANOQR show the screens for the calls you make and receive.
• Caller ID & spam app — another Android setting, for when ANOQR is not your phone app. It lets the app check calls from numbers that are not in your contacts while they ring, and silence or reject them if your settings say so.

Before Android asks for any of these, the app explains what it will read and where it goes. You can say no — caller ID still works without your contacts and call history — and you can withdraw any permission later in your phone’s settings.

Your contacts

If you allow it, the app sends the names and phone numbers in your phone’s contacts (all of them; there is no limit) to your ANOQR account, and keeps them up to date as you add, change or delete contacts on the phone. Contacts from your Google account are included, because your phone holds them. You can also add contacts by hand, from a contacts file, or with your browser’s contact picker.

We use your contacts for you alone: to name the people who call you, to name the numbers in your call history, and to show which of your contacts have chosen to be visible on ANOQR. Your contacts are never shown to other members, never used to name anyone on other members’ caller ID, and never sold.

The app’s contact cleaner works entirely on your phone. It finds contacts that look like the same person, shows them side by side, and changes nothing until you confirm: a merge copies every detail (addresses, emails, notes and the rest) into the contact you keep and checks it is there before removing the others. The only thing it tells your ANOQR account is how many possible duplicates it found, so the Contacts tab can offer it — never who they are.

One thing is shared, and only anonymously: if the owner of a number has asked to see how people save their number, they may be shown the name it is saved under — never who saved it. Names you save by hand can be offered this way. Names synced from your phone are offered only if you switch that on under Phone → Contacts; it is off unless you do.

Your call history

If you allow it, the app sends your phone’s call history to your ANOQR account. For each call that is the other number, whether the call was incoming, outgoing, missed, declined or blocked, when it happened and how long it lasted. The first time, it sends up to your 1,000 most recent calls from the last 90 days; after that, each new call shortly after it ends. A hidden number is recorded as hidden.

When ANOQR is your phone app and your mobile network shows a caller’s name with an incoming call (India’s caller name presentation, CNAP: the name the caller’s SIM is registered in), the app keeps that name on your phone for 90 days and sends it with that number’s calls, so the Calls tab can show it. It is stored with your own call history, shown only to you and deleted with it. It is never used to name that number for anyone else.

It is used only to show you your own calls in the Calls tab, with names and spam warnings. It is never used for anyone else’s caller ID, never used to decide what is spam, and never shared or sold. We keep it for 90 days — and no more than your 2,000 most recent calls — and delete it automatically after that.

To name a number in your history that is not in your contacts, ANOQR checks whether its owner has chosen to be visible on ANOQR. Up to 100 such numbers a day are checked for you automatically. These checks are recorded for rate limiting only, and are not included in the lookup count a number’s owner sees.

Calls in WhatsApp and other apps

Only if you switch on “WhatsApp calls here too” and then give ANOQR notification access in Android’s settings. The app then reads the call notifications that WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and other calling apps show — and only those — to note who the call was with (the name that app shows; never a number), whether it was incoming, outgoing or missed, when it happened and how long it lasted. Every other notification, including every message, is ignored as it arrives and never leaves your phone. These calls are kept with your call history, visible only to you, and deleted with it. Switch it off in Android’s settings under Notification access.

WhatsApp contacts and imported WhatsApp chats

WhatsApp marks the contacts on your phone who use it. If you let the app read your contacts, it reads those marks so that Contacts and Calls show WhatsApp’s chat, voice call and video call buttons beside the right people. That list stays on your phone. The app hands it to the ANOQR page in a part of the address that browsers never send to any server, and ANOQR never stores who uses WhatsApp.

If you export a chat from WhatsApp (Export chat) and share it to ANOQR, the chat is read and kept in the browser on your phone only. It is not sent to ANOQR. It contains other people’s messages, so keep it as you would keep the chat itself. You can delete it from the chat’s menu; clearing the browser’s data for ANOQR also deletes it.

Calls while they ring

When a call arrives from a number that is not in your phone’s contacts, the app sends that number to ANOQR to find out who it is and whether it has been reported as spam, and then follows your settings. These checks are recorded for rate limiting and are never shown to anyone. Calls you make are not sent, and neither are calls from your contacts — unless ANOQR is your phone app and you have not let it read your contacts, in which case it cannot tell them apart and checks every incoming number.

Numbers in TRAI’s 1600 series, which banks, other financial firms and government use for service calls, are never marked as spam and never blocked or silenced — by ANOQR or by any rule you set — because TRAI does not allow it.

When ANOQR is your phone app

• ANOQR shows the screen for each call you make or receive: who it is, answer and decline, mute, speaker, hold and the keypad. The call itself is carried by your mobile network on your own SIM and number, exactly as before. Its sound never passes through ANOQR and is never recorded.
• Android, not ANOQR, keeps your phone’s call log and shows missed calls, as it always has.
• On a phone with two SIMs, the SIMs’ names, the SIM you choose for calls and any SIM you ask it to remember for a number are kept on the phone only. The ANOQR website inside the app is told only how many SIMs there are, so it can show a Call button for each.
• When you tap Call on anoqr.com inside the app, the number and the name shown are handed to the app on your phone to place the call; nothing more is sent to ANOQR for it.

What other people can see about your number

• ANOQR shows a person’s name for a phone number only if that person has proved the number is theirs and chosen to show their name. Your photo is shown only if you choose that too. Everything is off until you switch it on.
• You prove a number by signing in with WhatsApp, through ANOQR Verification, or by sending a code from that number to ANOQR’s WhatsApp number. Because phone numbers are reassigned, the most recent proof wins.
• When someone looks your number up, the lookup is recorded. You can see how many lookups your number had in the last 30 days — never who made them. Lookups are limited per member, so nobody can work through the number space.
• A number whose owner is not on ANOQR is never given a name by ANOQR. Only spam reports, and any business that publishes the number on its own ANOQR page, are shown for it.

Spam reports, blocks and invitations

• When you report a number as spam, we store the number, the category and any note you add. Reports are counted — a verified member’s report counts twice — and stop counting after a year. Who reported a number is never shown.
• Numbers you block are stored so that the app can reject them.
• Invitations to your contacts are sent from your own WhatsApp. We record the number invited and the date only to keep invitations to a safe pace: a daily limit, and a limit on how often any one number is invited.

Your controls

• Call history: Phone → Caller ID → “Show my phone’s call history here”. Switching it off deletes the stored history at once and tells the app to stop sending it. “Delete stored call history” deletes it without switching off.
• Contacts: Phone → Contacts → “Forget my synced contacts”, or delete them one at a time.
• The app: unlink the phone under Phone → Caller ID and the app stops sending anything. Withdrawing the contacts or call log permission in your phone’s settings stops that part alone; choosing another caller ID & spam app in Android’s settings stops the checks while calls ring.
• Phone app and SIMs: the app’s calling settings (the gear on its keypad, or Phone → Caller ID → “Calling settings”) choose the SIM for calls, forget the SIMs remembered for numbers, and switch ANOQR on or off as your phone app. Android’s own settings (Apps → Default apps → Phone app) switch it back too.
• To have your account and everything above deleted, write to [email protected].

On the phone itself, the app keeps a private record of which contacts and calls it has already sent, so that it sends only what changed, along with your SIM choices and the last number you dialled on its keypad. They are removed when you uninstall the app or clear its data.

QR Call stickers

When someone scans your ANOQR QR Call sticker and calls or alerts you, we record which sticker, when, how long any call lasted, how it ended, the reason chosen, and a salted one-way hash of the scanner’s network address to stop abuse — not the address itself. Neither side is shown the other’s phone number. Where a call is connected through a telephone provider, that provider necessarily handles both numbers to connect it.