Nowadays in this crazy era where the clock is ticking until AI, fake news and online fraud occur every day resulting in losses of millions of Ringgit. The solution to this issue according to the Indian government is to make it mandatory to install a monitoring app on all smartphones sold in the country. Their directive has received criticism from the Indian people themselves and Apple has insisted that it will not install this application on iPhones sold.
After being criticized for a day around the world, the Indian government has now changed its stance. India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has now said that the installation of the Sanchar Saathi (Communication Partner) application will no longer be mandatory within 120 days of the directive being issued.
Installation is now voluntary with users able to remove or disable it if not used. This is different from before when it was mandatory to install and could not be uninstalled by the device owner.
This application was launched in 2023 as an initiative by the Ministry of Communications to combat online fraud, illegal device sales and prevent devices from being stolen. When installation is mandatory, there is concern that it could be used by the government to monitor or track user activity.
