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India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding (www.heise.de)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The Indian telecommunications authority, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has instructed eight messenger services to implement a permanent binding to inserted SIM cards. Affected are WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Snapchat, ShareChat, as well as the Indian services Arattai, JioChat, and Josh. According to the directive, the companies must ensure within 90 days that their services can only be used with a physically inserted SIM card.

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[–] 85 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I have an Indian colleague who told me he was threatened with arrest after a traffic stop for having element and conversations installed on his phone as the cop told him those are used by terrorists and he should just use WhatsApp

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  • [–] 39 points 8 months ago

    And that's the truest, just unpleasant, answer to all the talk about new messenger services and emerging replacements.

    Power doesn't care about rules. Power does care that you don't have a way to communicate freely. Power punishes you if you try to find a way.

    Social problems are not solved by technical means. Or, for the sake of correctness, - they are, but those technical means are called weapons of war. To change the balance of power so that your wishes were respected.

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  • [–] 34 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Why would a traffic cop be looking at his phones chat apps?!

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago*

    Need to start obscuring what is installed on devices. Terminal based communication and host it on a remote server that you connect to with SSH so when they inspect your phone there is nothing there.

    At least if I had something to hide I would be way ahead of dumb laws like this.

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    • [–] 67 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    "to protect against foreign cybercrime"

    Mate your country is famous for allowing cybercrime in your borders

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    • [–] 43 points 8 months ago

    Do you want new messenger services? Because this is how you get new messenger services.

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    [–] 35 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    As someone who only uses a phone without a SIM card this would suck for me.

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  • [+] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    Are many new phones being made with Sim slots? I assumed physical cards were fading.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago

    Pretty much all phones still have SIM card slots.

    It's really mostly North American models that have been releasing with no SIM card slots lately, but they usually release it in other markets with one.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I think a bunch still do. I don't have it because I just purchased the phone with no cell plan. I just use wifi and if I go out I use my work phone Hotspot to provide wifi to my personal. I use Google voice so I have a number and some of those chat apps that my friends use to keep in touch. Im in my 40's and have never had a cell phone bill still. Outside leaving the house, I honestly cant believe people are paying $60-$100+ dollars a month when you can get everything it does these days off wifi. For the minor inconvenience ive ran into sometimes I still think it's worth it for the price.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I just pay 15/month on mint for the lowest plan. Just so I can get directions and basic Internet while I'm out.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    It looks like that plan allows 35gb of data use in a month before it throttles, I don't think I've ever used that much mobile data.

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    • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    So does it just mean you can't use any of those apps if you use them on PC/tablet? Wonder if that would be big enough of a driver to push people to use something else for communication

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    • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    US iPhone have no sim slot. How that work in inida?

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago

    Esim is also considered as Sim inserted. During registration apps sent a SMS to mobile number, but with this the device will sent a SMS out to the chat platform. This ensure the number is verified. The message sent will be automated by granting the app SMS privileges. The Sim inserted/loaded will be noted by the app. During app startup it will check if the Sim inserted or loaded as esim is same Sim as before. Then it will work, else a Sim change warning will appear.

    Source: UPI payment apps in India already mandates this approach. They want all other apps to do the same.

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    • [–] 7 points 8 months ago

    So this is why Whatsapp logged me out of all my accounts with Indian telephone number yesterday and won't let me back in...

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    [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I think that SIM physical presence in the terminal adds just a bit more of difficulty to the main abusers but a lot of pain to the non ones, the apparent bind to univuqous real identity is illusory and fragile, by now we should assume WhatsApp and Telegram as potentially anonymous and spam as a mail account...

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Well it's hard to circumvent as it is some network apis provided by the telecom operators. Whatsapp will ask your device to connect to a url using your mobile data bearer to authenticate and the operator will tell them if you're actually who you declare to be.

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    • [–] 6 points 8 months ago

    This would kill bridges like slidge. They authenticate to WhatsApp using the web interface and that token lasts about two weeks before you have to relink it. A limit of six hours would make it unusable.

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    [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    What do they achieve from this?

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