India again tells WhatsApp to withdraw new privacy policy, firm says no accounts deleted yet

• The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), in a communication dated May 18, has asked WhatsApp to withdraw its controversial policy and given it a seven days ultimatum to respond.

• Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, in his letter to WhatsApp, said if the government gets no satisfactory response from the tech firm, necessary action in consonance with law will be taken.

• Meanwhile, the Facebook-owned messaging firm said a majority of the users have already accepted the new terms of service and that it hasn’t deleted any accounts or limited functionality of the users post May 15 deadline.

• India has hit out at Whatsapp’s new privacy policy by calling it differential in nature, which undermines the sacrosanct privacy policy of the country, data security and user choices, causing harm that rides the interests of the citizens.

• It added that the deferment of the policy implementation does not absolve WhatsApp from respecting the values of informational privacy, data security and user choice for Indian users. “As you’re doubtlessly aware, many Indian citizens depend on WhatsApp to communicate in everyday life.

• It is not just problematic, but also irresponsible for WhatsApp to leverage this position to impose unfair terms and conditions on Indian users, particularly those that discriminate against Indian users vis-à-vis users in Europe,” said the letter.

• Whatsapp, in a statement, said that it will continue to engage with the government and that the policy update will not impact the privacy of personal messages for anyone.

“Our goal is to provide information about new options we are building that people will have, to message a business on WhatsApp, in the future. While the majority of users who have received the new terms of service have accepted them, we appreciate some people haven’t had the chance to do so yet. No accounts were deleted on May 15 because of this update and no one in India lost functionality of WhatsApp either. We will follow up with reminders to people over the next several weeks. We’re grateful for the important role WhatsApp plays in people’s lives and we’ll take every opportunity to explain how we protect people’s personal messages and private information,” the messaging service giant added.

• Earlier during the hearing of a PIL in Delhi High Court, Centre alleged that WhatsApp’s new privacy policy violated the country’s Information Technology Act, 2020.

• WhatsApp said in a statement that it will send weekly reminders to its users and persuade them to accept the new terms and conditions, under which the user details, chats with business groups can be shared with the group companies including Facebook.

• Kazim Rizvi, the founding director at public policy think tank, ‘The Dialogue’ said it is incumbent upon the Indian Parliament to draft a law which protects user privacy while also taking into consideration India’s economic realities.

CONCLUSION

• “WhatsApp or any other platform should not be singled out, such decisions must be norm based to ensure legal consistency. We’re witnessing the use of evolving business models by various platforms hitting the market.

• WhatsApp’s new privacy policy is a known industry practice. Thus, State action on such an issue should be to regulate such practices as a whole for the market after conferring with relevant stakeholders and not single out a player with executive action,” he added.