Whatsapp and India
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Court judgements
2021: ‘It is voluntary, don’t use if your data is at risk’: HC
January 19, 2021: The Times of India
Accepting WhatsApp terms voluntary, don’t use if you feel data is at risk: HC
New Delhi:
The Delhi high court pointed out that accepting the new data sharing policy of messaging app WhatsApp is “voluntary” and people can choose not to use or join the social networking platform if they do not agree with its terms and conditions.
“It is a private app. If you think data is compromised, delete it, don’t use the app. It is a voluntary thing, use some other app,” Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva remarked, while hearing a plea by a lawyer challenging the new policy which has been deferred till May following global outrage.
Justice Sachdeva told the lawyer if the terms and conditions of most mobile apps are read closely “you would be surprised as to what all you are consenting to” and cited the case of Google maps. “Even it captures all your data and stores it,” the court said.
Due to paucity of time, the HC listed the matter for next week, saying it is yet to understand what data would be leaked according to the petitioner and to decide if notice must be issued in the plea or not. The Centre agreed and said the issue needs to be analysed even as senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for WhatsApp and parent company Facebook, told the court the plea is without any foundation.
“Private chats are completely encrypted. The change policy is for business WhatsApp,” Rohatgi said. Sibal pointed out that users have the option not to engage with business on WhatsApp if they don’t want to and safety of data would not change under the new policy.
The HC is hearing a plea by a lawyer that the updated privacy policy violates users’ right to privacy provided by the Constitution. It has claimed that the new privacy policy of WhatsApp allows full access into a user’s online activity without there being any supervision by the government.
The petition also claims that the option not to agree with the new policy was given to users in European nations, but not in India.
Usage in India
2018: 25% of new year greetings were from India
On WhatsApp, 25% of 75bn NY wishes from India, January 5, 2018: The Times of India
WhatsApp users across the world sent 75 billion messages on New Year’s Eve, the app said in a statement on Thursday. Of these, 20 billion were from India, the Facebook-owned platform’s biggest market with over 200 million monthly active users. The New Year’s Eve messages included over 13 billion images and five billion videos. “New Year’s Eve was WhatsApp’s biggest messaging day ever,” the statement said. This New Year’s Day, WhatsApp suffered a global outage for about an hour.
