WhatsApp Says It Banned 1.85 Million Accounts in India in March 2022

WhatsApp has taken motion in response to grievances acquired from customers in India through the grievance mechanisms of WhatsApp and has banned over 1.85 million accounts within the month of March 2022. In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, WhatsApp has launched its tenth User Safety Monthly Report, which exhibits that the corporate has actioned some accounts in India via its prevention and detection strategies for violating the legal guidelines of India or WhatsApp’s Terms of Service. The report particulars consumer complaints acquired and the corresponding motion taken by WhatsApp to fight abuse on the platform.

The newest WhatsApp India Monthly report underneath the Rule 4(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, particulars the knowledge for the interval from March 1, 2022, to March 31, 2022. The report exhibits {that a} complete of 597 grievances have been despatched by customers out of which 112 have been associated to accounting help, 407 have been associated to banning appeals, 37 have been associated to product help, 13 have been associated to security, and the remainder of the 28 have been associated to different help. Out of those, solely 74 requests have been actioned, all of which belonged to the ban enchantment class. It is necessary to notice that taking motion denotes both banning an account or a beforehand banned account being restored because of the consumer criticism. Users can ship grievances to WhatsApp, on grievance_officer_wa@help.whatsapp.com or ship a letter to the India Grievance Officer through put up. WhatsApp additionally has its personal instruments and sources deployed to cease abuse and different dangerous exercise.

Explaining the method of tackling abuses on the platform, WhatsApp says, “the abuse detection operates at three stages of an account’s lifestyle: at registration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback, received in the form of user reports and blocks. A team of analysts augments these systems to evaluate edge cases and help improve effectiveness over time. We have detailed our on-platform capabilities to identify and ban accounts in this white paper.”

“WhatsApp is an industry leader in preventing abuse, among end-to-end encrypted messaging services. Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state-of-the-art technology, data scientists and experts, and processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform. In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we’ve published our report for the month of March 2022. This tenth user-safety report contains details of the user complaints received and the corresponding action taken by WhatsApp. As captured in the latest Monthly Report, WhatsApp banned over 1.8 million accounts in the month of March,” commented a WhatsApp spokesperson.

Moreover, WhatsApp had banned over 1.4 million Indian accounts in February, as per the report launched final month.