Apple Pressed by India to Pre-Install Government Apps on iPhones
Apple Pressed by India to Pre-Install Government Apps on iPhones
Apple and other smartphone makers are being pressed by India to pre-install government-developed apps on devices before sale, echoing a similar 2021...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not only do the feds force companies to install backdoors into the OS, but they also have backdoors built into the processors and communications networks.
This is so annoying, I don't want bloatware on my new iPhone.
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.
No. If you allow one country to shirk the norm, other countries will also start pushing
I don't see it necessarely as a bad thing. I would rather have my gov id app (for taxes, id and driving licence, public services info) on my phone when i buy it, rather than candy crush and other fucking bloatware. I think it would also help a lot of non-tech savy users set up their phones quickly.
Second of all, gov ID apps having their own store on the side is good. Them being only available on google's store makes it so that if you want to access public services from your state you have to go through google (?), it is clearly not acceptable by a government standpoint, It is even worse than a monopoly.
I would rather have my gov id app
I'd rather have none of that. Give me basic system apps and an app store, and I'll handle the rest.
If an org wants stuff pre-installed, there should be an option for rolling out a batch of app installs when issuing a new device (probably exists?). Outside of that, leave the base install as bare as possible, and give me an option to import everything from my old device (exists).
See what you started EU
And what apps are EU forcing to pre-install?
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/apple-eu-digital-markets-act-changes/
lol yeah the EU mandates that users can delete more core pre-installed apps. It’s literally the opposite
Apple will let users delete core apps, including the App Store, Messages, Photos, Camera, and Safari, for the first time.
Good morning sirs
I think Apple would pull out of India before they'd cave to this.
Apple will do whatever is profitable. Corporations don’t have ethics.
Yep. Late-stage capitalism incentivizes and rewards unethical behavior.
They're pretty happy to comply with censorship in China though.
my country doesn't really do this