- Monday, February 24, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
WHATSAPP Messenger on Friday (9) told the Delhi High Court that it would not compel its users to opt for its new privacy policy till the data protection bill comes into force. Senior counsel Harish Salve, who appeared for WhatsApp and Facebook, informed the court that the new privacy policies were on hold.
“We voluntarily agreed to put it (the policy) on hold… we will not compel people to accept,” Salve said, adding that WhatsApp would nonetheless continue to display the update to its users.
“The government has asked to shut down the policy. We have said we will not enforce it till the data protection bill is passed. That is open-ended because we don’t know when the Bill is going to come out,” the counsel added.
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WhatsApp also clarified before a bench comprising Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh that it would not limit the functionality meantime for users who are not opting for the new privacy policy.
Salve said, “The MeitY [Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology] feels WhatsApp’s privacy policy is against Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules 2011.”
“We replied to MeitY’s notice seeking a response, saying that WhatsApp will not limit functionality for some time and continue to show users the update,” Salve added.
The court is hearing the appeals of Facebook and its firm WhatsApp against the single-judge order refusing to stop competition regulator CCI’s (Competition Commission of India) order seeking a probe into the instant messaging platform’s new privacy policy.
WhatsApp privacy policy was first announced in January
WhatsApp’s privacy policy was first announced in January and the initial roll-out was scheduled for February. But the platform delayed it till mid-May, citing concerns. It had said that it would use three months to make the users understand that their data is safe.
One of the points in the initial policy was that WhatsApp accounts of users who refuse to accept it will be deleted. This saw several users moving to other platforms like Telegram and Signal. Later, WhatsApp said that it will not delete the accounts of users but instead limit the functionality of the app for them. This meant while the users could receive messages or calls, they couldn’t reply to them. This confused a lot of users about the app’s working.
