India has backtracked on an order for all smartphones to run a government-launched cybersecurity app, after a backlash over privacy concerns.
They were also ordered to ensure the app could not be deleted by users, and that future software updates would roll the app out to owners of older phone models as well.
After a backlash from experts, opposition parties and members of the public, who called the move “dystopian” and said forcing a government app on users in this way put India on a par with North Korea and Russia, India’s telecoms minister said on Tuesday that the app would remain “completely optional”.
“If you want to delete it, you can. If you don’t wish to register, you shouldn’t register and can remove it anytime,” he told reporters outside parliament, contrary to the orders issued in the directive.
Editors note: (I would expect it to be initially optional but later made mandatory, it can be considered a creeping law that will be forced very soon.)
India’s government sent a notice to private companies last week giving them 90 days to ensure that a government app was “preinstalled on all mobile handsets manufactured or imported for use in India.”
The order said the requirement was meant “to identify and report acts that may endanger telecom cybersecurity.” On Tuesday, the government explained that the app, Sanchar Saathi, was intended to prevent crime, including the theft and smuggling of phones and the call-center fraud that wreaks havoc within India and abroad.
Reuters had already reported the order’s existence on Monday night, and copies were circulated online. Many people in India were in uproar, as were the political parties opposed to the tech-focused and strong-armed government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“Sanchar Saathi is a snooping app,” Priyanka Gandhi, a scion of the Congress Party and its general secretary, wrote on social media. “There’s a very fine line between reporting fraud and seeing what every citizen of India is doing on their phone.”
The app can track phone locations, and Ms. Gandhi and other critics of Mr. Modi regard it as a tool of mass surveillance.
the Sanchar Saathi app, installed at the operating-system layer of a phone, can in principle do much more than track locations. “There’s nothing to suggest this app cannot be used to pull out data,” including messages, sound and images, he said. Since the government exempted itself from India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act in 2023, there is no clear legal basis to prevent it from gathering individuals’ information.
Editors note: The app in theory could detect what applications are on your device(including Tor or Monero wallets!)
“When the government forces a special app, with special powers, onto every new phone, it is effectively putting its own lock inside your house,” said Apar Gupta, a lawyer and a founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation.
“You lock your front door because you are entitled to safety and privacy,” he added. “The same logic applies to digital life. Asking for safeguards and limits is about making sure state power is accountable.”
Russia recently started preloading a state-owned messaging app onto its citizens’ phones. The Russian government called it a measure to combat fraud, as India has done with Sanchar Saathi.
For this to work in practice, the app will almost certainly need system level or root level access, similar to carrier or OEM system apps, so that it cannot be disabled. That design choice erodes the protections that normally prevent one app from peering into the data of others, and turns Sanchar Saathi into a permanent, non-consensual point of access sitting inside the operating system of every Indian smartphone user.
If there was ever a time to learn about securing your internet privacy with OPSEC now is the time, this system of intrusive surveillance could become the standard rule globally.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/business/india-tracking-app-sanchar-saathi.html
