Can Govt Ban Whatsapp’s New Privacy Policy? This Is What Govt Said..

Whatsapp’s new privacy policy has created a lot of confusion and controversies in the country. And now, reports are that the Indian government is looking at best possible options around the privacy policy rules.

Read on to find out the plans of the Government about the Privacy policy of WhatsApp. 

Government Now Looking For Ways To Work Around WhatsApp’s New Privacy Policy

As per a senior Ministry of Electronics and IT official, the government is now “pro-actively” looking for ways to find out optimum options around the new privacy policy of WhatsApp. 

As per MeitY Special Secretary and Financial Advisor Jyoti Arora, “The ministry is cognisant of this problem. Today, Germany has banned this privacy policy of WhatsApp. The ministry is proactively looking at what we can do about it.”

She also talked about the need of the hour to have a robust cyber security infrastructure for the country especially now that the country depends majorly on the digital modes for a lot of things. 

As per Arora, multiple initiatives have been taken up by MeitY Which includes Cyber Swachhta Kendra” (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre) along with sectoral CERTs in the area of finance and power.

WhatsApp’s New Privacy Policy: Will You Lose Access If You Don’t Accept?

The WhatsApp new policy has an updated privacy policy where you need to compulsorily agree to the terms of services to continue using the messaging service where it says it will be collecting users’ location, device model, operating system, battery level, browser details, payment processing method, transactions and such other private data.

In the clarification, WhatsApp said it only implies to messaging a business account on WhatsApp, and not an individual user.

As WhatsApp made it mandatory for users to agree to the new terms or delete their WhatsApp account, millions of users are now outraged. 

Whatsapp said that if any user does not accept the new privacy policy, it will still be able to get back to the app with full functionality, however if policy is not accepted, the account of the user shall be deemed to be inactive. Also, inactive accounts are automatically deleted after 120 days.

After the outrage, WhatsApp had clarified that the accounts of the people who don’t agree with the policy will not be closed; however, now WhatsApp has said that they will lose access to some of the features of WhatsApp.