Why I Built Guard Instead of Truecaller

The problem I couldn't unsee

That email landed during a week when we were testing the first version of Guard. We'd built it for ourselves, honestly. My co-founder had just become a parent and started asking uncomfortable questions about what his kids' devices were leaking to app makers. We'd been developers long enough to know that permissions are real, and that most people have no idea what they've granted.

The difference between Truecaller and what we're building is this: Truecaller is a caller ID and spam-blocking service. It needs your contacts to work, and it monetises that data. That's not a secret, but most people who download it don't read the fine print. We wanted something that did the opposite. Instead of hiding what apps access, we wanted to surface it.

I'm not here to bash Truecaller. Plenty of people find it useful. But if you're 35, you work with client data, and you're starting to care about what your phone knows about you, Truecaller is the wrong tool. Guard is built for exactly that person.

What a real permission audit actually looks like

When we launched the free version of Guard last year, we made a deliberate choice: we'd show people permissions for 12 common apps right in the dashboard. Instagram, Facebook, Gmail, TikTok, Maps, Photos, Amazon, Spotify, Messenger, WhatsApp, Banking apps, and a few others. Not because those apps are evil, but because they're everywhere and permission behaviour varies wildly between them.

Here's what matters. You open Guard, you see what permissions each app requests. You get a privacy risk score for each one. If you see something that makes you uncomfortable (like Maps asking for access to your photos or contacts), you tap it and jump straight into iOS Settings. You revoke it right there. No middle layers, no workarounds.

Truecaller wants your contacts because it's a calling service. We show you what's asking for permissions because you deserve to know. The Free version does all of that with no paywall. We're not trying to convert you into a paying subscriber by gatekeeping basic privacy awareness.

The clipboard check that came from real frustration

Last October, we noticed something odd in our analytics. A lot of users were checking Guard's Personal Pro features in the first few days, then asking about clipboard access specifically. We followed up with some of them.

Turns out, when iOS started blocking clipboard access in iOS 15, apps got clever. Some of them started requesting clipboard permission explicitly, and users had no way to audit which ones had asked for it. One user told us he'd discovered that a weather app was reading his clipboard every time he opened it. A weather app. Clipboard.

So we added a clipboard safety check in Personal Pro. It walks through the apps on your phone and tells you which ones have asked for clipboard access, and which ones have actually accessed it recently. It's a small feature, but it's the kind of thing that makes you go 'I didn't know that was possible.'

Real-time alerts, not just dashboards

Permissions change. Apps update and request new permissions. Sometimes it's legitimate; sometimes it's not. The Free version shows you a snapshot of what 12 common apps are asking for. Personal Pro users get real-time alerts when any app on their phone requests a new permission or when tracking changes.

We built this because a dashboard is useful once. Alerts are useful forever. If you're handling sensitive data or you're a parent concerned about your kid's phone, you want to know the moment something changes, not check in once a week and hope you didn't miss anything.

The Family tier adds a family hub for up to 6 devices plus child controls. Same permission visibility across everyone's phones, same alerts, but you can see patterns across the family. We've had parents use it to catch that their teenager granted location access to an app they'd never heard of.

What Guard isn't trying to be

This matters. Guard is not a system-level scanner that can audit what permissions other apps actually hold right now. iOS sandboxing prevents that. We're not trying to pretend we can see inside every app's actual behaviour. What we do is educate. We show you the permissions apps request. We explain why that matters. We let you revoke what you don't want.

We're also not an antivirus, not a VPN, not a tool that claims to see your microphone or camera being abused in real time. iOS doesn't expose that telemetry to third-party apps, so anyone claiming otherwise is either lying or selling you something based on fear.

What Guard does is straightforward: it removes the gap between what you've granted and what you understand you've granted. That gap is where a lot of privacy loss happens, and it's fixable without magic or fear-mongering.

Why this matters at 35, not 25

We built Guard for people 25-45, and honestly, the 35-45 bracket is where the conversation changes. By then, you've usually got data that matters. Client lists, financial documents, work communications, maybe a kid's photos. You're not downloading an app to see who's calling you. You're thinking about what happens when you do.

Truecaller works brilliantly if you want it to. I'm not saying don't use it. But if you're asking 'what does this app actually need,' Guard answers that question better. It costs nothing to find out. It takes five minutes to check.