 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(November 2023) |
 | This article contains promotional content .(June 2020) |
 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 2016 |
| Headquarters | Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
Key people | Alex Algard (CEO, founder) Kush Parikh (President) [1] |
| Website | www |
Hiya is a Seattle-based company that provides spam and fraud call protection and identity services to more than 400 million users around the globe. [2]
Hiya was initially developed as a caller-ID app for Whitepages. [3] In April 2016, Hiya was spun off from Whitepages; by that time, the Hiya app had 25 million downloads. Whitepages' founder, Alex Algard stepped down from the parent company to focus on leading Hiya, which, as of December 2020, employs 120. [4] [5]
In February 2016, Hiya, then part of Whitepages, reached a deal with Samsung to integrate its caller profile and spam protection services into all Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge phones in 16 countries. The company extended its partnership with Samsung in a separate deal in August 2016 to include its service on the Galaxy Note 7 and to expand the partnership to a total of 28 countries. In August 2016, Hiya launched Hiya Cloud, its network-level caller ID and call-blocking offering. [6]
After offering only a limited version of its app for iPhones, Hiya announced in September 2016 that the full version of its app would be available on iOS 10. Soon after, Hiya began providing spam protection services to AT&T phones through the AT&T Call Protect product. In 2017, Hiya entered a similar partnership with ZTE to provide call spam protection services for all Axon 7 users. [7]
In October 2017, Hiya announced it had received its first outside funding: a Series A of $18 million led by Balderton Capital with participation from Nautilus Venture Partners and Lumia Capital. Hiya said it would use the funds to expand globally. Following the investment, Balderton’s Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, an early executive at Uber and Dropbox, joined Hiya’s board. [8] [9]
In November 2023, Hiya partnered with Liberty Latin America for spam and fraud protection. [10]
In February 2024, Hiya partnered with Virgin Media O2 to work together on AI-powered spam and fraud protection. [11]
Samsung has extended its strategic partnership with Hiya through 2025 to automatically block fraud calls on the new Galaxy Note20. [12]
Users can report numbers associated with unwanted calls through the app as well as block future calls from certain phone numbers. [13]
Caller ID spoofing is a spoofing attack which causes the telephone network's Caller ID to indicate to the receiver of a call that the originator of the call is a station other than the true originating station. This can lead to a display showing a phone number different from that of the telephone from which the call was placed.
A robocall is a phone call that uses a computerized autodialer to deliver a pre-recorded message, as if from a robot. Robocalls are often associated with political and telemarketing phone campaigns, but can also be used for public service, emergency announcements, or scammers. Multiple businesses and telemarketing companies use auto-dialing software to deliver prerecorded messages to millions of users. Some robocalls use personalized audio messages to simulate an actual personal phone call. The service is also viewed as prone to association with scams.
Telemarketing fraud is fraudulent selling conducted over the telephone. The term is also used for telephone fraud not involving selling.
A nuisance call is an unwanted and unsolicited telephone call. Common types of nuisance calls include prank calls, telemarketing calls, and silent calls. Obscene phone calls and other threatening calls are criminal acts in most jurisdictions, particularly when hate crime is involved.
YouMail is an Irvine, CA-based developer of a visual voicemail and Robocall blocking service for mobile phones, available in the US and the UK. Their voicemail mobile app replaces the voicemail service offered by mobile phone service providers, and offers webmail-like voicemail access and voicemail-to-text transcriptions. The company also compiles the YouMail Robocall index by monitoring automated call patterns and behaviors, and verifying that activity against numbers that its customers block, or report as spam.
Call blocking, also known as call block, call screening, or call rejection, allows a telephone subscriber to block incoming calls from specific telephone numbers. This feature may require an additional payment to the subscriber's telephone company or a third-party.
Whitepages is a provider of online directory services, fraud screening, background checks and identity verification for consumers and businesses. It has the largest database available of contact information on residents of the United States.
Truecaller is a smartphone application that has features of caller ID, call-blocking, flash-messaging, call-recording, chat and voice by using the Internet. It requires users to provide a standard cellular mobile number for registering with the service. The app is available for Android and iOS.
NumBuster! is a phone community that users can access via a mobile phone client and a Web application. Developed by NumBuster Ltd, it allows users to find contact details of any phone number, exchange information about numbers with other users and block calls and messages. The client is available for Android and Apple iOS.
Whoscall is a mobile application that offers caller identification services. It was developed by Gogolook Co., Ltd., a listed company in Taiwan. The function of Whoscall is to identify incoming calls, detect scam/harassment numbers, and filter spam text messages, blocking them accordingly. Its name is derived from a shorter version of the phrase “Who is calling?“. The app currently has over 100 million users, 2.6 billion phone number entries, 25 billion identified number & SMS, and is available in 31 countries/regions, including Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, and Brazil. The application owns the largest number database in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Whoscall is also the strategic partner of several governmental agencies in their anti-fraud efforts, including the National Police Agency (Taiwan), the Financial Supervisory Service , Fukuoka City Government., Police Cyber Taskforce (Thailand) the Malaysia police and state government.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 is a line of Android-based smartphones manufactured, released and marketed by Samsung Electronics. Succeeding the Samsung Galaxy S5, the S6 was not released as a singular model, but instead in two variations unveiled and marketed together—the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge—with the latter differentiated primarily by having a display that is wrapped along the sides of the device. It is distinguished from its predecessor through a internal battery with an increased charging speed but a decreased capacity, an optically stabilized camera, sound in slow motion video recordings, a glass back, and it lacks a user-replaceable battery, a memory card slot, water resistance, and MHL-to-HDMI connection for viewing on an external monitor or television set.
Kubity is a cloud-based 3D communication tool that works on desktop computers, the web, smartphones, tablets, augmented reality gear, and virtual reality glasses. Kubity is powered by several proprietary 3D processing engines including "Paragone" and "Etna" that prepare the 3D file for transfer over mobile devices.
The Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and Samsung Galaxy S7 Active are Android-based smartphones manufactured, released and marketed by Samsung Electronics. The S7 series serves as the successor to the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+ and S6 Active released in 2015. The S7 and S7 Edge were officially unveiled on 21 February 2016 during a Samsung press conference at Mobile World Congress, with a European and North American release on 11 March 2016. The S7 Active was unveiled on 4 June 2016, and released on AT&T in the United States on 10 June 2016.
Samsung Experience was the name of the software overlay by Samsung for its Galaxy devices running Android 7.x “Nougat” and Android 8.x “Oreo”. It was introduced in late 2016 on a beta build based on Android 7.0 “Nougat” for the Galaxy S7, succeeding TouchWiz. It has been succeeded in 2018 by One UI based on Android 9 “Pie” and later versions.
Alex Algard is an Internet entrepreneur. He is the founder and former CEO of Hiya, Ekata and the founder and former CEO of Whitepages.com, and CarDomain.
Bixby is a virtual assistant developed by Samsung Electronics, launched in 2017 as a replacement of the S Voice assistant. It runs on various Samsung branded appliances, primarily mobile devices but also some refrigerators. The suite includes a voice assistant known as Bixby Voice, as well as contextual search and visual search features including tools like Bixby Vision, an augmented reality camera app, Bixby Text Call, a handsfree call answer feature, and others like Bixby Routines, Bixby Home, & Bixby Daily, which uses time period account-based routines for actions like calling, setting an alarm, or adding an event,.
STIR/SHAKEN, or SHAKEN/STIR, is a suite of protocols and procedures intended to combat caller ID spoofing on public telephone networks. Caller ID spoofing is used by robocallers to mask their identity or to make it appear the call is from a legitimate source, often a nearby phone number with the same area code and exchange, or from well-known agencies like the Internal Revenue Service or Ontario Provincial Police. This sort of spoofing is common for calls originating from voice-over-IP (VoIP) systems, which can be located anywhere in the world.
Google Messages is a text messaging software application developed by Google for its Android and Wear OS mobile operating systems. It is also available as a web app.
CallApp is a mobile app offering caller ID, call blocking and call recording. It gives background information about the entities behind incoming or outgoing calls by utilizing the user's community-generated content and social networking services.
RealCall is a US-based AI caller identification and call blocking smartphone application, used to detect, engage and block call and SMS scamming and spamming. It has AI algorithms with built-in free reverse phone lookup service and customized answer bots for detection, engagement and blocking of unwanted calls and messages. The app is available for Android and iOS devices.