WhatsApp banned 1.85 million accounts in India in March

WhatsApp has revealed it banned 1.85 million accounts in India in March 2022 after receiving grievances from users across the country via its grievance mechanisms. In its tenth User Safety Monthly Report released on Sunday, WhatsApp said it took action against some accounts in India through its prevention and detection methods for violating WhatsApp’s Terms of Service.

The report, from March 1, 2022, to March 31, 2022, shows a total of 597 grievances were sent by users, of which 407 requests belonged to the ban appeal category. WhatsApp said it took action on 74 submissions belonging to the ban appeal category. Other grievances were related to accounting support (112), product support (37), safety (13), and the rest, 28, were related to other support.

“The abuse detection operates at three stages of an account’s lifestyle: at registration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback received in 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 said.

“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 to keep our users safe on our platform. Following the IT Rules 2021, we’ve published our report for 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 March,” commented a WhatsApp spokesperson.

The instant messaging and voice-over-IP service company banned over 1.4 million Indian accounts in February.

Users can send grievances to WhatsApp on [email protected] or send a letter to the India Grievance Officer via post.

According to new Indian Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, digital platforms with over 5 million users must publish compliance reports every month, mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken.

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