Indian Government Says WhatsApp Is Tricking People Into Accepting The New Privacy Policy

On Jun 4, 2021

The Indian Government told the Delhi High Court that the instant messaging app WhatsApp is “tricking consent” from its users for the new privacy policy. The Government also said that WhatsApp is evading a data protection Bill currently in the works. The Centre also said before the court that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) formed the prima facie opinion that WhatsApp violated the Competition Act, 2002.

“WhatsApp as unleashed its digital prowess to existing users and would force them to accept updated 2021 privacy policy, to transfer existing user base committed the updated privacy policy before Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill becomes law,” it said in the affidavit, as per ANI.

In the affidavit, the Centre also urged the high court to issue a direction to WhatsApp to stop sending ‘push notification’ to users related to the new privacy policy. It also asked the court to ask WhatsApp to place on the record number of times such push notification have been pushed daily and its conversion rate as well.

“It is submitted that millions of WhatsApp existing users, those who have not accepted the updated 2021 privacy policy are being bombarded with notifications on an everyday basis,” the Centre said in the affidavit.

Earlier this year, WhatsApp forced a new privacy policy on its users that lets the messaging service share data with its parent company Facebook, if users have interacted with a business on the messaging platform. The company first tried to propose to implement it in January and said users who did not accept the terms would have their accounts deleted. The company has now backtracked from the policy due to backlash from millions of users and the Indian Government.

WhatsApp is also battling the Indian Government in the Delhi High Court against the latest IT guidelines claiming that tracing of identifying originators of messages violates the right to privacy under the Indian law and effectively ends the platform’s end-to-end encryption policy.