WhatsApp Bans 18.58 Lakh Indian Accounts in January 2022

The Meta (formerly Facebook) owned mobile messaging platform WhatsApp banned 18.58 lakh Indian accounts in January 2022 based on complaints received from users through its complaints division and the agency's mechanism company to prevent and detect lawbreakers, according to a monthly report published on Tuesday.

WhatsApp received complaints against 495 Indian accounts who appealed to ban 285 accounts, out of which 24 were excluded. Most of the 18.58 lakh accounts were restricted based on harmful behaviour detected through tools and resources implemented by the company in its app. "The data shared (banning of 18.58 lakh accounts) - highlights the number of Indian accounts banned by WhatsApp between 1 January 2022 to 31 January 2022 using the abuse as mentioned earlier detection approach, which also includes action taken in furtherance to negative feedback received from users via our 'Report' feature," said WhatsApp's India Monthly Report under the Information Technology Rules (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Code of Ethics), 2022.

The company identifies Indian accounts through the ISD code of +91 with the prefix before the 10-digit mobile number.