5

Sanchar Saathi App: New technological initiative

Recently, the Government of India has taken an important step to further strengthen Digital India. It has been made mandatory to install a government app called Sanchar Sathi on smartphones. The main purpose of this app is to locate stolen phones. Now this app will already be present in every new smartphone sold in the country, while in the already existing phones it will be made available through software update.

Sanchar Saathi App Requirements

The Sanchar Sathi app, which is available on both Android and iOS platforms, asks for a variety of permissions. However, on Android it has more access, including access to the phone’s hardware and data. Its purpose is to track the phone if it is stolen by reading the IMEI number. For its correct implementation, the app requires the following permissions:

• camera


• call log


• Phone


• SMS


• storage


• flashlight allowed


• running foreground service


• vibrator control


• run on startup


• google play license check


• full network access


• Permission to view network connections


• prevent phone from sleeping


• show notifications

Is Sanchar Saathi app dangerous?

The sought access of Sanchar Sathi app cannot be called dangerous. Different apps ask for different permissions according to their functioning. The main function of this app is tracking stolen phones, so it requires more access than you need. However, it is true that this app can access sensitive information, which is also possible to be misused.

The function of the app to locate a stolen phone is useful, but if it falls into the wrong hands this information can be misused. Therefore, users should exercise caution regarding this app.