WhatsApp Agrees to Not Block Users in India for Not Accepting the New Privacy Policy but Has Also Filed a Lawsuit Against the Government for Pressurizing Them to Reveal User Information

India has made WhatsApp agree to its terms and why shouldn’t it considering how it is the largest hub of WhatsApp users.

WhatsApp published its new policies back in January which caused a wide uproar among the users because one point stated that the information data from WhatsApp will now be shared with its parent company Facebook. People condemned against it and the policy was pulled back for a few months and again reappeared through pop up notifications in April.

The company stated that those users who do not accept the policy this time will eventually lose access to many WhatsApp messages soon after the due date and the Indian government did not like this stance.

The government of India wrote a letter to WhatsApp where they claimed that they will ban the application within their region if WhatsApp applies such a tactic there. The implementation of a ban was a loss for WhatsApp because the company currently has almost 459 million active users in India. The tech giant realized this and has now issued a notice claiming that they will not remove the accessibility of messages to the users in India despite them not accepting the new policy. The company will however keep reminding users about accepting the policy through pop up notifications every now and then furthering claiming that this stance will be maintained until Personal Data Protection (PDP) law in India is imposed.

However, WhatsApp is not agreeing to everything the Indian government says. The tech giant has recently filed a case against the Indian government in the court of the Capital of the country: Delhi. The tech giant has stated that the Indian government has demanded the company to break the privacy protections that are being imposed in India on Wednesday and asks the social media companies to identify and reveal chats and data to the authorities when they ask for it.

WhatsApp has appealed in the court to state this stance as a violations of privacy rights. The company has replied that they cannot take part in any such actions with the Indian government because they have maintained a level of privacy for their users with a promise that their chats will always remain private and hence they are end to end encrypted.

The Indian government however stated that they will require data of people who are wrongdoers only but the company in return has said that for this they will have to keep tabs of each and every chat which will eventually break the encryption of both the receivers’ ad originators in the conversation and the promise of privacy that the company holds.

The tech giant has though made sure to look up at different ways through which they can help the government in this matter while at the same time keeping their audience information safe.

Currently the complaint filed in court has not been confirmed nor it has been revealed when the court will be taking up this matter because the people directly and closely involved in this lawsuit have decided to remain quite about it considering the sensitivity the matter holds.

Apart from this matter, the government of India has been in courts fighting with other tech giants with various other matters of privacy policy in different courts in Delhi and other cities.



Sources: 1 / 2.

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