Amid privacy row, WhatsApp says won't limit functionality of users

Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp, on Thursday, reiterated its commitment towards safeguarding users’ privacy. Responding to the row over its contentious privacy policy update, the company said that the recent update doesn’t change the privacy of personal chats, but provides additional information about how people can interact with businesses. 

“We will not limit the functionality of how WhatsApp works in the coming weeks,” ANI quoted a WhatsApp spokesperson as saying. 

WhatsApp’s privacy policy update allows the company to extract more data from users’ chats with WhatsApp business accounts, which may then be shared with other Facebook group companies. This data could then be used for targeted advertising. 

The rollout of the new privacy policy update in January was met with sharp criticism, as WhatsApp had warned its users of terminating their accounts if they didn’t agree to the policy update. The company has since reversed its position and said that while it won’t delete the accounts of users, it will keep sending such users reminders to provide their assent to the new policy. 

The case over WhatsApp’s new privacy policy is being heard in the Delhi High Court. On Thursday, the Centre, which is a party to the case, in a written affidavit claimed that WhatsApp users who hadn’t accepted the new policy were being bombarded with push notifications. 

"It is submitted that millions of WhatsApp existing users, those who have not accepted the updated 2021 privacy policy are being bombarded with notifications on an everyday basis," the Centre said in the affidavit. It also noted that these notifications are against the "very grain of prima facie opinion of the Competition Commission of India's order".

Meanwhile, in a separate suit in the Delhi HC, WhatsApp has challenged the Centre’s new guidelines for digital media intermediaries or the IT rules. One of the provisions in the new rules states that significant social media intermediaries i.e. those with over 5 million users, will have to enable the identification of the first originator of any piece of information which the government deems violates the sovereignty or integrity of India or contains sexually explicit content.

In its suit against the Centre, WhatsApp has submitted that fulfilling this requirement would require it to break the end-to-end (E2E) encryption on its platform, thus compromising user privacy.