SEATTLE, WA — (Marketwired) — 04/27/16 — Hiya Inc., a new company, service and caller ID app that will innovate the mobile phone experience, today announced its official market debut and rollout to users worldwide. Formerly known as Whitepages Caller ID, a business division of Whitepages, Hiya brings users the most advanced caller ID technology on the market. As a stand-alone company, Hiya will further enhance its core caller ID product for consumers, maintaining the most accurate, up-to-date information on billions of calls and texts processed on the platform each month. Hiya will also continue to explore partnerships to expand its world-class phone solutions to global users.
“For smartphone users, it–s never been more important to know who is on the other end of the line, particularly as more bad actors look to infringe on that personal space with spam calls,” said Alex Algard, who is founder and will be CEO of Hiya. “We–ve made great strides incubating this business at Whitepages, but now is the right time to transition to a stand-alone, start-up company. I–m excited that Hiya can be fully focused on the huge and growing opportunity to provide a better phone experience for all mobile users worldwide.”
While the FCC works to protect consumers in the United States from spam and other types of robocalls to mobile phones, many countries provide no such protection for mobile phone users. In 2014 in the U.S. alone, more than 54 percent of complaints to the Federal Trade Commission concerned companies contacting users by phone with scams or other unwanted calls.(1) Key features of the Hiya app and partner solutions are designed to combat this growing issue. They include:
Hiya automatically identifies the person or business on the other end of the line, for both incoming and outgoing calls, regardless of whether they are in a user–s contacts.
Hiya analyzes more than 400 MM incoming calls per month to provide users with alerts and news on the latest phone scams and fraud.
Hiya lets users block unwanted callers, and provides them with an auto-blocking feature that keeps known scam numbers, like the recent , from ever ringing through to a user–s phone.
Led by a team of seasoned product and security executives with roots at Google, Intel Security and Samsung, Hiya currently touches the lives of mobile users in more than 192 countries, through more than 25 MM direct app downloads and partnerships with T-Mobile and Samsung.
“Despite all of the technology focused on today–s mobile experience, very little has been done to make calls smarter, more relevant and actionable,” said Stanley Kim, Chief Operating Officer, Hiya. “While we often think about how to avoid the calls we don–t want to answer, it–s just as critical that our phones make sure we don–t miss the connections that are most important.”
Download the Hiya app for Android , or to learn more, please visit .
Hiya provides enhanced Caller ID products and services designed to make the phone experience better. With a database of more than 600 MM mobile and landline phone numbers in the US, and over 1.5 billion unique numbers globally, Hiya leverages its expansive algorithms to identify unknown calls and texts and to monitor phone-based threats for consumers and businesses. Hiya screens more than 400 MM incoming calls per month, and has detected more than one billion robo, telemarketing and scam calls and texts to date. Hiya is available as a consumer app on Google Android and is integrated into the phone experience for T-Mobile and Samsung Galaxy S7 users worldwide. For more information, please visit .
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Lisa Bowers
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