In November, over 71 lakh accounts were banned in India due to violations of WhatsApp policy

During November 2023, WhatsApp said it addressed six grievances from users in the country and eight orders from the Grievance Appellate Tribunal

In November of last year, WhatsApp blocked over 71 lakh accounts in India, the business disclosed in its most recent monthly report. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced that it has “proactively” banned nearly 19 lakh accounts in India. This indicates that the firm took action against these accounts prior to receiving any accusations from users alleging policy violations. According to the company’s report, WhatsApp also addressed a small number of the more than 8,000 complaints that it received from consumers during that same month.

WhatsApp reports that it banned 71,96,000 accounts between November 1 and November 30 of last year in accordance with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules (2021) in its most recent monthly report. According to the messaging platform, these were accounts that were registered using a phone number that had the international prefix +91.

According to WhatsApp, it proactively removed 19,54,000 of the more than 71 lakh accounts in November of last year; users were not required to report these accounts for breaking the company’s rules. In addition to enabling users to report accounts, WhatsApp has in-built abuse detection technologies that can proactively identify policy infractions.

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Users can file complaints with WhatsApp by emailing [email protected] or by mailing a letter to the India Grievance Officer, in accordance with current regulations. Account support, feature assistance, feedback, denied requests pertaining to banned accounts, or accounts that did not breach the terms of service of the company or Indian laws are all covered, according to the corporation.

WhatsApp said that it acted on six requests—one pertaining to ban appeals and the others to various support inquiries—that were submitted as grievances by the company’s Grievance Officer in order to comply with the IT Rules (2021). The corporation got 8,841 grievances in November 2023, and in the same month, it complied with 8 orders issued by the Grievance Appellate Committee.