#sanchar-saathi

#sanchar-saathi

The Communications Ministry said in a Wednesday statement that the "[g]overnment has decided not to make the pre-installation mandatory for mobile manufacturers." "The app is secure and purely meant to help citizens from bad actors in the cyber world," the statement said, adding that it was dropping the directive because the app was becoming very popular anyway, with 600,000 downloads of the app, called Sanchar Saathi ("communication partner"), since Tuesday.

Apple is not planning to comply with an order from the Indian government directing phone manufacturers to preload a state-backed cybersecurity app, according to . Industry sources tell Reuters that Apple plans to tell India's government that they don't comply with requests like this due to privacy and security concerns. However, Apple won't go to court or "take a public stand" over the order.

"Spoofed/ Tampered IMEIs in telecom network leads to situation where same IMEI is working in different devices at different places simultaneously and pose challenges in action against such IMEIs," according to the announcement. "India has [a] big second-hand mobile device market. Cases have also been observed where stolen or blacklisted devices are being re-sold. It makes the purchaser abettor in crime and causes financial loss to them.