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293

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

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

71 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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] 59 points 2 days 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] 60 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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] 2 points 21 hours ago

Fair enough. I just wish it were a single super-app since that's more user-friendly. But its fine.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 days ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

Lmao. No. UPI is an open standard I think... Open as in you can apply to use it. It is run via the Reserve Bank of India to ensure safety and validity.

But no. None of these are open source. Location tracking is, I think, not across them all...

UPI apps use it because it's easier to pinpoint where a payment was made, thus ensuring you can verify the payment receiver. That's all I understand about it atm.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

No and No(For Digilocker)

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago

Right...?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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] 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Also true. Its an open standard as far as I can tell.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

You might think that, but creating a third party app is not comes with a lot of hassles. One needs to get license to access the infrastructure.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago

True. Not completely open I guess...

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days 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] 24 points 2 days 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] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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] 22 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days 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] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days 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] 10 points 2 days 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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

my country doesn't really do this

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