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Apple Pressed by India to Pre-Install Government Apps on iPhones (www.macrumors.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by avieshek@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[-] ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world 60 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[-] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 59 points 2 weeks 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.

[-] ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

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

[-] Tangent5280@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

It's an indian government venture. If the scope is too big app updates would be spaced out to every 8 years

[-] TheBat@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks 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.

[-] ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

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

[-] astro_ray@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

True. Not completely open I guess...

[-] Tangent5280@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Stops a lot of scammers and if some gets through there might be a paper trail to follow and link the accounts involved to real people.

[-] ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Especially with finance related stuff like this, its very crucial that such regulations exist. You're right.

[-] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 34 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 26 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[-] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago
[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 27 points 2 weeks ago

These are neither confirmed, nor have ever been proven, and don't deal with phones.

The first link is about networking hardware, which has already been found by security researchers long ago.

The second is about an attempt at doing something like a backdoor that never came to fruition.

The last link has never been observed or proven, and how it would work is impossible to know. Having a "backdoor" on a CPU is meaningless without the other attached hardware to work with. Some would say impossible, and made up.

[-] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

So you don’t believe anything that’s been leaked by whistleblowers? You think the Snowden stuff is all fake?

[-] Hominine@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago

Depending a lie with whataboutism is a bad look.

Why not just admit you don't know, but enjoy being paranoid and conspiratorial in this space?

[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago

Once: apparently the number of times someone has said “I enjoy being paranoid“

[-] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

What lie? What “whataboutism”? The person tried to deny there’s any surveillance built into western technologies, and I gave a prominent example to prove them wrong. That’s not what “whataboutism” means.

Weird move for y’all to burn your astroturf accounts gaslighting people about what we’ve all personally witnessed from whistleblowers. You really expect that to work?

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago

The NSA activities Snowden leaked were specifically happening in data and telecom centers to snoop traffic in transit. He make known some secret programs about exploiting and compromising devices, but of that's already known as a possibility. He never detailed anything about backdoors on phones from manufacturers as you've suggested.

[-] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

Right, the Snowden leaks did not include phone backdoors. Just everything else you denied.

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

Lol I'm not denying anything but your misguided comment. It's not accurate.

[-] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

It’s 100% accurate.

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

Cool, then proof.

[-] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago
[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Again-and maybe you don't know what a backdoor is exactly-this is not from the manufacturer as you've claimed. This is Dropoutjeep, a long-patched vulnerability that was exploited to install a backdoor.

Your original comment is about manufacturers installing backdoors, and this is not that. This is also decade old news.

No goalpost has been been moved here, you haven't even left the endzone yet with your claims.

Direct quote from you: "as if there aren’t western backdoors built into all of these."

And again, to date, this has not been the case. No manufacturer has been building backdoors into devices. Other hackers finding exploits and continuing to exploit them on behalf of governments is not the same thing. It's detectable, it's measurable, and it only works on small groups of devices, not an entire population.

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[-] ctx@lemmy.world 26 points 2 weeks ago

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

[-] Nobilmantis@feddit.it 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 weeks ago

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).

[-] trolololol@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

So you want apple to help pre installing something so you didn't depend on Apple when users actually want to use the app. Can you tell me how this makes sense?

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[-] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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.

[-] hddsx@lemmy.ca 20 points 2 weeks ago

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

[-] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[-] hddsx@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 weeks ago

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

[-] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

How can it be a precedent of something else entirely?

[-] shabablinchikow@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

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

[-] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago

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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[-] wavegor34@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 weeks ago

Good morning sirs

[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

See what you started EU

[-] Dju@lemmy.world 19 points 2 weeks ago
[-] kautau@lemmy.world 24 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[-] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago

Fucking propaganda. It seriously enrages me how people like you have become so programmed that they'll attribute everything to an organization you've been told to hate. Don't you ever stop and see how you're being used?

[-] plz1@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

I think Apple would pull out of India before they'd cave to this.

[-] Xanthobilly@lemmy.world 33 points 2 weeks ago

Apple will do whatever is profitable. Corporations don’t have ethics.

[-] kipo@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago

Yep. Late-stage capitalism incentivizes and rewards unethical behavior.

[-] Phoenix3875@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago

They're pretty happy to comply with censorship in China though.

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this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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