The government had earlier mandated the Sanchar Saathi smartphone app to improve cyber security and enable citizens to report fraud. With a $1.4 million withdrawal, the government on Wednesday announced a decision to make pre-installation optional for mobile device manufacturers.
Read the full statement here —
In a statement issued on Wednesday, December 3, the Department of Communications noted –
With the intention of providing access to cyber security to all citizens, the government has mandated the pre-installation of the Sanchar Saathi app on all smartphones. The app is safe and only meant to help citizens from bad actors in the cyber world.
It helps in “Jan bhagidari” to all citizens to report such bad actors and actions while protecting the users themselves. There is no feature other than protecting users in the app and they can remove the app at any time. The government clarified this.
To date, 1.4 million users have downloaded the app and contribute information on 2,000 fraud cases daily. The number of users is growing rapidly and the mandate to install the application was intended to speed up this process and make the application easily accessible to less informed citizens. In the last day alone, 6,000,000 citizens registered to download the application, which represents a tenfold increase in its use. This is a confirmation of the citizens’ faith in this application for the protection provided to them by the government.
Due to the growing acceptance of Sanchar Saathi, the government has decided to make pre-installation mandatory for mobile device manufacturers.
