WhatsApp Banned Accounts: 2 million Indian WhatsApp accounts banned between May 2021 and June 2021

WhatsApp Banned Accounts in India: It has been revealed that as many as 2 mn WhatsApp accounts have been banned in a month's time in India.

WhatsApp Banned Accounts in India: WhatsApp account bans have been rising phenomenally in recent periods. (HT_PRINT)

WhatsApp on Thursday published the first edition of its monthly Report in India. This report is in line with the Indian government's new I-T rules that require tech companies operating in India to publish a monthly report in addition to appointing a grievance officer in the country among other things. In its report, the Facebook-owned messaging app revealed that it banned a total of 2 million WhatsApp accounts in India between May 15, 2021, and June 15, 2021.

Why were WhatsApp accounts banned? The company revealed that more than 95% of these bans happened due to the unauthorised use of automated or bulk messaging or Spam. Globally, WhatsApp bans around 8 million accounts every month.

WhatsApp account bans rising: The company also said that the number of accounts that are banned each month have increased significantly since 2019 since its systems have become more advanced and are catching more attempts to send bulk or automated messages.

What were WhatsApp account complaints about? WhatsApp also said that it received a total of 345 complaints between May 15 and June 15 of which 70 pertained to account support, 204 were ban appeals, 8 were related to security issues, 43 were related to product support and 20 were related to issues that cannot be classified. Of these, WhatsApp actioned 63 ban appeals.

What does WhatsApp have to say? “We are particularly focused on prevention because we believe it is much better to stop harmful activity from happening in the first place than to detect it after harm has occurred,” WhatsApp wrote in its monthly compliance report.

WhatsApp account abuse: “The 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. A team of analysts augments these systems to evaluate edge cases and help improve our effectiveness over time,” the company added.