WhatsApp Takes Down More Than 23 Lakh Bad Accounts In India In July

Meta-owned WhatsApp banned over 23 lakh bad accounts in India in July in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021, the company said on Thursday.

The platform with over 400 million users in the country had restricted over 22 lakh accounts with bad records in June. Image: Getty

Meta-owned WhatsApp banned over 23 lakh bad accounts in India in July in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021, the company said on Thursday. WhatsApp additionally received 574 complaint reports in the month of July in India, and the records "actioned" were 27.

The platform with over 400 million users in the country had restricted over 22 lakh accounts with bad records in June. "In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we've published our report for the month of July 2022. As captured in the latest monthly report, WhatsApp banned over 2.3 million accounts (2,387,000) in the month of July," a company spokesperson said.

Published in accordance with Rule 4(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, the report contained data on actions made by WhatsApp in light of complaints received from users in India.

The objections were received via the grievance mechanisms and accounts were actioned through its prevention and detection methods for violating the laws of the land or its terms of service. Under the upgraded IT Rules 2021, major digital and social media platforms, with in excess of five million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports.

"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," said the company spokesperson.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp banned over 19 lakh Indian accounts in May on the basis of complaints received from users via its grievances channel and through its own mechanism to prevent and detect violations, as per the latest monthly report published by the messaging platform. The new IT rules which came into effect last year mandate large digital platforms (with over 50 lakh users) to publish compliance reports every month, mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken.