Meta-Owned WhatsApp Banned More Than 2.9 Million Accounts In January

In a bid to check abuse on the platform, WhatsApp banned almost 3 lakh bad accounts in the month of January.

WhatsApp's 'User Safety Reports' refer to the company's action taken in response to grievances received from users in India.

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In a bid to check abuse on the platform, WhatsApp banned almost 3 lakh bad accounts in the month of January, the Meta-owned company has announced. The world's most popular messaging platform brings out monthly reports in accordance with Rule 4(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules, 2021).

Between January 1 and January 31, 2023, as many as 2,918,000 WhatsApp accounts were banned, the company said while adding 1,038,000 of these accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from users.

WhatsApp's 'User Safety Reports' refer to the company's action taken in response to grievances received from users in India via the grievance mechanisms of WhatsApp and accounts actioned in the country through the Meta-owned company's prevention and detection methods for violating the laws of the country or WhatsApp’s Terms of Service.

"WhatsApp is an industry leader in preventing abuse, among end-to-end encrypted messaging services. We have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state-of-the-art technology, data scientists and experts, and in 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 January 2023.

"This user-safety report contains details of the user complaints received and the corresponding action taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp’s own preventive actions to combat abuse on our platform. As captured in the latest Monthly Report, WhatsApp banned over 2.9 million accounts in the month of January," a WhatsApp spokesperson said in a media statement.

Meanwhile, Telegram recently hit back at rival Meta-owned WhatsApp after chief Will Cathcart slammed the messaging app over its security practices. Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn refuted claims made by Cathcart about the security of Telegram which was founded by Pavel Durov, a recent report by GSMArena said.