Sandes messaging app is an Indian alternative to WhatsApp

Rate this post

In February of this year, the Government of India released a new messaging app called “Sandes” as an alternative to WhatsApp for civil servants.As CNBC-TV18 According to the report, this Made-in-India messaging app is now available to the general public.

Sandes Messaging App-A Valuable WhatsApp Alternative?

“Sandes is a unique open source-based instant messaging platform developed by the NIC of the Government of India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to facilitate instant messaging communications in government agencies.” Read the description of the app.

Create a new account with Sandes needs a phone number.. After confirming the number with OTP, you can set the name, gender and profile picture. The name is a required field, but entering a gender and profile picture is optional.

Creating a profile sandwich

There are four tabs at the bottom: Chat, Contacts, Groups, and Account Settings. You also have the option to provide feedback within the app, as shown in the image below.
Sands chat and groups

From the account settings page, you can access your app’s settings, turn off read receipts, log out, and delete your account.Sandes also enables you Link Aadhaar account If that’s what you’re interested in.

Sands setting

On the privacy side, the app’s description states that Sandes supports end-to-end encryption (E2EE) messaging and encrypted backup. on the other hand, Sandes’ privacy policy clearly states that apps collect metadata. This includes the sender’s ID, recipient’s ID, date, time, size of instant or group messages, date, time, and duration of voice and video calls.

The app also collects device-specific information such as hardware model, operating system, app version, language settings, time zone, and device identifier. It also contains information about your Internet Service Provider (ISP). You can check the privacy policy of the Sandes app here.

I personally don’t recommend using government apps for personal messages, but if you’re interested, check out the app using the links below. Also, if you’re looking for another secure messaging app, you can find it in the linked article.

Download the Sandes app (Play Store | App Store)