I don't get it. Don't many if not most of these scams originate from India? Wouldn't it be better to stop the scammers directly?
India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
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Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do they actually have a choice? Usually with laws and orders from the government, you can't do much than either go with the flow, try to lobby against it afterwards, or straight up refuse and leave the market. Considering Apple's ties to India, I feel like Apple is unlikely to leave, so that really only leaves Apple with the first; comply and complain.
> Do they actually have a choice? Yes. Apple's revenues are half as much as the government of India's [1][2]. That's a resource advantage that gives Cupertino real leverage against New Delhi. [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-reports-fourth-... $102.5bn / quarter [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen... $827bn / year
Apple need India though. They’re moving a lot of their manufacturing there to derisk from a China.
Also, they gave in to the CCP and always say ‘we obey the laws of the countries in which we operate’.
Apple is, at the end of the day, just a business.
Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
#43What stops someone from loading GrapheneOS on their (Indian) Android phone?
It will be used as evidence that the person who has GrapheneOS on their phone is attempting to break the law. Telegram and Signal chats are often used as circumstantial evidence of malfeasance in Indian national security cases, so the jump to using GrapheneOS as evidence of malfesance is tiny.
FUD
Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
#44I don't get it. Don't many if not most of these scams originate from India? Wouldn't it be better to stop the scammers directly?
If their goal was to increase the security for their citizens, you would have a point
Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
#45I wouldn’t venture in the direction that many here will take. I will point out that India have the highest number of victims of cyber-fraud. I personally know many people who have lost significant sums through social engineering attacks. The money is transferred to multiple mule accounts and physical cash is siphoned off to the fraudsters by the owners of those account. They choose helpless, illiterate, village dwell…
Gonna agree with you, even Singapore has announced several policy changes the past few weeks to deal with all the fraud - more severe punishment and forcing apple to change how iMessage spam with .gov.sg domains is handled.
I don't think this new app will resolve India's fraud issues unfortunately, there probably needs to be more policy changes at banks/fincos. As much as India obsesses with KYC processes, it doesn't seem to be working/enough. I don't see this new app being required as something totalitarian, it would be much easier for the gov to ask for that type of stuff to be tacked on to UPI apps anyways.
Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
#46I wouldn’t venture in the direction that many here will take. I will point out that India have the highest number of victims of cyber-fraud. I personally know many people who have lost significant sums through social engineering attacks. The money is transferred to multiple mule accounts and physical cash is siphoned off to the fraudsters by the owners of those account. They choose helpless, illiterate, village dwell…
Yeah this is the wrong audience for this argument, but it has merit. An app like this can be both a massive government power grab and useful to protect many, many people who are vulnerable to fraud.
The number of my relatives that will just believe whatever someone tells them on the phone is terrifying.
Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
#47I don't get it. Don't many if not most of these scams originate from India? Wouldn't it be better to stop the scammers directly?
Actually it’s Cambodia now.
Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even in mainland China, where iOS does have a large amount of changes to comply with local regulations, Apple does not pre-install any apps from anyone.
> Even in mainland China [..] Apple does not pre-install any apps from anyone. That's because China has no regulation obliging them to do so. China takes the other, more comprehensive, route to privacy invasion. Sucking up every bit of data at the router.
The GFW is certainly looking for traffic to block, but it is not really going to invade much privacy, as it cannot decrypt anything using HTTPS/TLS.
Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
#49I wouldn’t venture in the direction that many here will take. I will point out that India have the highest number of victims of cyber-fraud. I personally know many people who have lost significant sums through social engineering attacks. The money is transferred to multiple mule accounts and physical cash is siphoned off to the fraudsters by the owners of those account. They choose helpless, illiterate, village dwell…
> I will point out that India have the highest number of victims of cyber-fraud Based on what? > Another huge issue is unregulated loan apps You don't need to root everyone's phones to regulate financial crime. > Then there are obvious security issues with terrorism and organized crime India is building a centralised backdoor into every phone in the country. That's a massive national security risk.
The way for the community to fight this is to keep finding holes in the app until they stop trying to put one on.
Re: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I will point out that India have the highest number of victims of cyber-fraud Based on what? > Another huge issue is unregulated loan apps You don't need to root everyone's phones to regulate financial crime. > Then there are obvious security issues with terrorism and organized crime India is building a centralised backdoor into every phone in the country. That's a massive national security risk.
The way for the community to fight this is to keep finding holes in the app until they stop trying to put one on.
> way for the community to fight this is to keep finding holes in the app until they stop trying to put one on
I'm not familiar with Indian activist tradition. But if we look at other countries where this happened, the technical attacks didn't work. It had to be done through policy, instead.