WhatsApp banned 17.59 lakh Indian accounts in November

WhatsApp banned 17,59,000 accounts registered with an Indian mobile phone number in the month of November. In its latest compliance report released in January, the Meta-owned chat app said it made the decision to ban accounts using the abuse detection approach, which includes comments from other users and their appeals through the Report feature on the website. application.

Compliance reports, released at the beginning of each month, are subject to Rule 4 (1) (d) of the Indian Information Technology Rules (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Code of Ethics) implemented in 2021 WhatsApp, in these reports, highlights two things: complaints received from Indian users through different claim submission modes, such as email and postal mail, and accounts that were "processed" through the "prevention methods and detection of WhatsApp for violating Indian laws or WhatsApp Terms of Service. "

In November, WhatsApp received up to 602 reports from users who had signed up with an Indian mobile phone number. The maximum claims made by users were to demand the ban of the accounts, and the number of which amounts to 357. WhatsApp took action on only 36 of the 357 accounts and banned them. The total number of banned accounts, which is 17.59,000, includes these 36 accounts.

Other categories for which reports were received are "Account Support," "Product Support," and "Security," among others. No action was taken for appeals in these categories, WhatsApp said in its report. The company said users with "security" related reports are told to use the reporting feature in the app, and reports received through this method are not "logged as action taken."

In addition, WhatsApp's abuse detection tools are focused on preventing harmful behaviours on the platform. To curb such behaviour, abuse detection works in three stages of an account's lifestyle: at sign-up, during posts, and in response to negative comments. The latter includes the user reports and blocks.

Simply put, when you block someone and report them, WhatsApp takes notice of the activity and puts the user in question under the scanner for its abuse detection. "A team of analysts augments these systems to evaluate edge cases and help improve our effectiveness over time. We will continue to bring more transparency to our work and include more information about our efforts in future reports," said WhatsApp.