India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding (www.heise.de)

submitted 6 days ago by schizoidman@lemmy.zip to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/54163653

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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[-] als@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 6 days ago

I'm interested if Signal will pull out of the region, stand up to the authoritarians or fold and do as they ask

[-] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 days ago

Session is a fork of Signal that doesn't require phone numbers.

[-] far_university1990@reddthat.com 9 points 6 days ago

Basically no longer fork since 2020, has own protocol now. https://getsession.org/introducing-the-session-protocol

[-] Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago

Too bad that whenever I've tried it, its eaten my battery

[-] ThatGuyNamedZeus@feddit.org 20 points 6 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Meta/facebook forced it by bribing the officials in india....allegedly

[-] redparadise@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 6 days ago

Grand total of ₹5 bribe, neatly partners with the other surveillance apps the government is already forcing onto phones with gov ID verification app for everywhere you go on top.

[-] ryannathans@aussie.zone 17 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

How the fuck does that work with practically all of these having desktop apps? Can apps safely tell them difference between eSims and physical sims?

[-] PiraHxCx@lemmy.ml 22 points 6 days ago

"For web and desktop applications like WhatsApp Web, the directive provides for additional measures: users must be automatically logged out after six hours at the latest and re-authenticate via QR code"

My WhatsApp number is from a SIM I lost (for non-payment) about 5 years ago, so far the phone company didn't recycle the number so I'm still using it :P

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 20 points 6 days ago

that's a ticking time bomb if i ever seen one

[-] ryannathans@aussie.zone 8 points 6 days ago

I missed that part, oh no that's awful

[-] redparadise@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 6 days ago

E-sim should work

this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025

76 points (100.0% liked)

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