WhatsApp ban slapped on over 2 mn Indian accounts over ‘abuse’ in Oct

Facebook-owned messenger app is continuing its crackdown in India against wrongdoers, WhatsApp ban has been imposed on as many as 2 mn Indian accounts, according to the latest compliance report the company filed for the month of October with Indian authorities. WhatsApp also revealed that it received 500 grievance reports in October. 

In its latest report released on Monday, WhatsApp said 2,069,000 Indian accounts were banned on WhatsApp during the said period. Whatsapp accounts in India are identified via a 91 phone number.

"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 in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform," a WhatsApp spokesperson said.

In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, the platform has published its fifth monthly report for the month of October, the WhatsApp spokesperson said.

"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 million accounts in the month of October," the Whatsapp spokesperson added.

WhatsApp had stated earlier that more than 95 per cent of bans are due to the unauthorised use of automated or bulk messaging (spam). The global average number of accounts that WhatsApp bans to prevent abuse on its platform is around 8 million accounts per month.

Over 2.2 million Indian accounts were banned by WhatsApp, while 560 grievance reports were received by the messaging platform in the month of September.

WhatsApp, in its latest report, said it received 500 user reports spanning across account support (146), ban appeal (248), other support (42), product support (53), and safety (11) during October.

During this period, 18 accounts were "actioned" under the ban appeal category based on the reports received. WhatsApp explained that "Accounts Actioned" denotes reports where it took remedial action based on the report.

Taking action denotes either banning an account or a previously banned account being restored as a result of the complaint.

The new IT rules - which came into effect in May - require large digital platforms (with over 5 million users), like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter etc, to publish compliance reports every month. In this report, the company must mention the details of complaints received and the action taken by it, which is exactly what WhatsApp has done.