Google will allow businesses to call their customers with an Android phone while displaying the businesses’ name, logo, the reason for calling and a verification symbol indicating the business has been authenticated by Google, the company announced in a blog post on Tuesday. The feature, called Verified Calls, will be available on Google’s Phone app, which is the default calling app on Pixel devices, among others, and will also be available for download starting later this week on more Android devices. Verified Calls are initially rolling out in India, US, Mexico, Brazil, and Spain, with more countries to come. If it works as advertised, the feature may help to filter spam calls, which are a huge problem in India. On an average, an Indian received 25.6 pesky calls a month in 2019, a 15% increase from 2018, as per a report by caller ID app Truecaller, released in December 2019. According to that report, India was the fifth most spam called country in the world. Telecom service providers, trying to sell data plans among other things, were the biggest spammers in 2019, with 67% of the spam calls made by them, the report had said. How Verified Calls will work: Before a business calls a user, it will first send Google’s dedicated Verified Calls server their phone number, the user’s phone number, and a reason for calling the user. When a business calls a user, the user’s device compares the incoming call information with the information Google received from the business.…
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