WhatsApp Bans Over 18 Lakh Accounts In India

Synopsis – The monthly report published, following the Rule 4(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, contains information about what action the company has taken on the grievances filed by its users in India and accounts actioned through WhatsApp’s prevention and detection methods that violate the laws of India.

Mata-owned instant messaging platform WhatsApp in its latest monthly report has revealed that it has blocked more than 18 lakh accounts in India from January 1 to January 31 that allegedly violated WhatsApp guidelines. According to the report dated March 1, 2022, the messaging giant banned over 1,858,000 accounts in the country. Apart from this, the company has also mentioned that it received a total number of 495 reports and it took action on over 24 of them.

The monthly report published following the Rule 4(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, contains information about what action the company has taken on the grievances filed by its users in India and accounts actioned through WhatsApp’s prevention and detection methods that violate the laws of India.

Notably, the company takes action on the grievances of users linked with violations of WhatsApp’s Terms of Services, which are shared through an email to grievance officer wa@support.whatsapp.com or apart from this, through the post to India Grievance Officer.

The Meta-owned company mentioned in its report, 

“Safety-related grievances pertain to issues that may be about abuse or harmful behavior on the platform. For such grievances, we respond to the user guiding them to report the complaint via in-app reporting. This allows WhatsApp to receive the most recent messages sent to the complainant by the reported user or group, as well as information on the complainant’s recent interactions with the reported user. As per our processes, this is not recorded as an action taken against the grievance report.”

Furthermore, the statement noted that an account is ‘actioned’ means that an account is either banned following violations or a banned account is restored following a complaint. “We respond to all grievances received except in cases where a grievance is deemed to be a duplicate of a previous ticket,” said the company in its statement.

Elaborating about its way of handling grievances, WhatsApp mentions in the report that its “abuse detection operates at three stages of an account’s lifestyle: at registration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback, which we receive in the form of user reports and blocks.”

Further, it states that a team of analysts augments these systems to evaluate ‘edge cases’ in order to help in improving the effectiveness of the platform over time. “We have detailed our on-platform capabilities to identify and ban accounts in this white paper,” the report mentioned. WhatsApp identifies an Indian account through the prefix “+91” before the 10 digit phone number.