this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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Apple Pressed by India to Pre-Install Government Apps on iPhones (www.macrumors.com)
submitted 1 day 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 45 points 23 hours 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.

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 46 points 23 hours 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.

[–] randompasta@lemmy.today 22 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 15 points 20 hours ago

Right...?

[–] RogueBanana@lemmy.zip 21 points 22 hours ago

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

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 4 points 20 hours 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.