this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025

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264

Apple Pressed by India to Pre-Install Government Apps on iPhones (www.macrumors.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The push comes as India seeks greater regulatory control over global tech companies. The initiative would require manufacturers to include the government's GOV.in app store and related apps like BHIM, DigiLocker, VoterID on smartphones sold from India.

Beyond pre-installation, they also requested that their apps be available for download outside the company's app stores from third-party sources without triggering "untrusted source" warnings.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'll be the paragraph guy today.

BHIM stands for BHarat Interface for Money, a payment application that uses India's money transfer protocol called United Payment Interface (UPI). This makes all payments cashless, from ₹1 to ₹1,00,000. No transaction fees, as of yet.

Digilocker is a government document vault app that allows digital copies of documents to be enforced. You don't need to carry around the physical copies, the QR code generated by the app is scanned by specialised scanners that validate the validity of the document and also fetches any relevant records. This includes the Driver's License, Aadhar Card (Indian National Identity Card), PAN Card (Permanent Account Number; used for what is essentially a 2 Factor Authentication system of documents for verification of identity), etc.

Voter ID app is to identify your voting region, and make any changes to the details of your Voter ID.

The Gov.in store is new to me and I don't think I need one more store on my device, but hey... I don't use an iPhone 😄.

Why is all of this not a single app? Idk.

Coming back to the point, I don't mind having important apps like these pre-installed. It helps to have these for people who aren't as technically inclined as you'd hope.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 day ago

Why is all of this not a single app?

Because they have very different functions though all associated with the government. It's just better to separate apps with different functions.

Thanks for the explanation.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago (2 children)

These are all open-source and don't track location, right?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

Right...?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago

I mean they are known to be invasive, even trying to ban VPNs so don't be too surprised lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

BHIM stands for BHarat Interface for Money, a payment application that uses India's money transfer protocol called United Payment Interface (UPI). This makes all payments cashless, from ₹1 to ₹1,00,000. No transaction fees, as of yet

In addition to BHIM, there are lot of third party apps for UPI.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago

This is so annoying, I don't want bloatware on my new iPhone.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wild how many people preach from their high horse every time a non-western country does this, as if there aren’t western backdoors built into all of these.

I’m against all government backdoors and spying efforts, but let’s not pretend they’re attempting anything the west has not already successfully done. There’s definitely an air of racism to the double standard.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (19 children)

What backdoors are pre installed on western phones? I'm talking actual backdoors on the device itself. I feel researches would have already found and altered to some very publicly.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

my country doesn't really do this

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

What are the nature of the apps? If it's just things like digital IDs and government services, that's not bad since it helps tech illiterate people accessing them. Big room for fash fuckery though.

And as always, preinstalled apps should be deletable.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

No. If you allow one country to shirk the norm, other countries will also start pushing

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't think the slippery slope argument works here, you can object to any rules and regulations by saying other countries would start pushing bad rules and regulations if you comply. It's not all or nothing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don’t think of it as slippery slope, I think of it as setting precedent

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

How can it be a precedent of something else entirely?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Russia already has a norm to show “Russian apps” the first time activating an iPhone or iPad, so that ship has sailed

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The ship hasn't sailed; the more countries you let do that, the more problematic the precedent becomes. This isn't a binary thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

It really should be a binary thing. Company policy should be to ship the same, base OS to every customer in every country, and the only differences would be configuration for things like which radio bands to activate.

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