'Even known names and social media handles went berserk by stating that Karachi has been attacked and an F-16 was shot down.'
WhatsApp on Tuesday said its latest policy update does not affect the privacy of messages as the Facebook-owned company sought to address concerns around security of user data on the platform.
The ministry of electronics and information technology has directed WhatsApp to withdraw its new privacy policy, according to sources. The IT ministry believes that the changes to WhatsApp privacy policy and the manner of introducing the said changes undermines the sacrosanct values of informational privacy, data security and user choice and harms the rights and interests of Indian citizens, government sources said. The government has given seven days to WhatsApp to respond to the notice and if no satisfactory response is received, necessary steps in consonance with law will be taken, sources informed. In a communication to WhatsApp on May 18, the ministry has once again told the messaging platform to withdraw its privacy policy 2021, they said.
Experts believe that the sector should not jump to conclusions on WhatsApp Pay, which is still in its 'Beta testing' phase.
WhatsApp has drawn massive criticism from users globally, including India over concerns that data was being shared with its parent company, Facebook. WhatsApp, on its part, has maintained that messages on the platform are end-to-end encrypted and that neither WhatsApp nor Facebook can see the private messages on WhatsApp's platform.
The ministry has taken a strong position on the matter, and made it clear that it is not just problematic but also "irresponsible" for the messaging platform to leverage its position to impose "unfair" terms and conditions on Indian users, when many depend on WhatsApp to communicate in everyday life, according to the sources.
Bisht used the fake profiles to connect with women aged between 18 and 30 years on various onlione dating platforms.
In a recent operation, Bihar Police busted a fraudulent scheme operating under the guise of 'All India Pregnant Job Service', which deceived men with promises of substantial payments for impregnating childless women.
The most prominent changes deal with how WhatsApp shares information with Facebook and its subsidiaries.
"In response to India's payments data circular, we've built a system that stores payments-related data locally in India," WhatsApp spokesperson said in a statement.
Here are some of the recent cases where WhatsApp rumours purportedly had a role to play
Senior RSS leader Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi's call to drop the Aurangzeb tomb controversy challenges decades of communal rhetoric in Maharashtra, igniting hopes for unity and a balanced historical narrative.
WhatsApp will not delete any account for not accepting its new privacy update, but users not agreeing to the controversial terms after "several weeks" will not be able to access their chat list, and eventually, will not be able to answer incoming phone or video calls over the app.
The outage raised broader concerns about the dependency on a few large tech companies controlling critical platforms.
'Indian players in the digital market should not be dominated by global players, and they should not dominate the smaller players -- these discussions are on.'
The Congress on Friday alleged that Facebook was being used as a weapon by the Bharatiya Janata Party to spread hate and fake news in the country and demanded that a joint parliamentary committee probe be conducted on the issue and laws be enacted to restrict Facebook and WhatsApp.
Fair trade regulator Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Wednesday ordered a detailed probe into popular messaging platform WhatsApp's updated privacy policy and terms of service after finding that the 'exploitative and exclusionary conduct' in the garb of the policy update prima facie violated competition norms.
During the short hearing, Justice Prathibha M Singh took strong objection to an email sent by WhatsApp to the court. "I was in any case not going to hear it," the court clarified and sent the matter to another bench recording that the email sent by WhatsApp should be withdrawn unconditionally.
Indian accounts, identified by the "+91" in their mobile numbers, were actioned through WhatsApp's prevention and detection methods, for violating either the laws of India or the company's Terms of Service, the firm said in its compliance report.
A new cyber fraud known as 'pig butchering scam' or 'investment scam' has emerged, targeting unemployed youths, housewives, students, and needy people who are made to lose large sums of money daily, according to the latest annual report of the Union home ministry.
A Mumbai court has extended the police remand of the boyfriend of an Air India pilot, who allegedly committed suicide, until December 2. The police are seeking to retrieve deleted WhatsApp chats between the two from the boyfriend's mobile phone, believing the chats could contain crucial information about the pilot's death. The boyfriend, Aditya Pandit, was arrested and charged with abetment of suicide after the pilot, Srishti Tuli, was found dead in her apartment on Monday.
UPI-related frauds have accounted for a cumulative loss of Rs 2,145 crore across 2.7 million reported incidents.
Fish sellers of Chittranjan Park found themselves in a state of disbelief last week when the anti-meat overdrive of the Hindu right hit the local markets with a warning to shut shops because they were close to a temple.
In a statement, the IT ministry termed WhatsApp's last moment challenge to the intermediary guidelines as an unfortunate attempt to prevent norms from coming into effect.
The company was awaiting clarification from the Reserve Bank of India on data storage before it took a final call on data localisation.
A Dalit student at Delhi University's Shaheed Bhagat Singh College has filed a police complaint alleging that its principal hurled casteist slurs and assaulted him after he was falsely accused of sending obscene messages on the official WhatsApp group of his department. The student, a third-year BA Hindi Honours student, claimed the incident caused him mental trauma and defamation. He has also written to the University Vice-Chancellor and the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, seeking action against those involved. The principal has denied the allegations, claiming the student was being manipulated by a faculty member against whom an inquiry is underway.
Bank of America has been hit by a whistleblower complaint that its officials in Asia had shared "non-public information" with investors "before the bank sold hundreds of millions of dollars of stock", reports the Wall Street Journal.
'WhatsApp is storing our data on servers which are physically located in another country.' 'We might be having good relations with a particular country at this very moment, where WhatsApp's data servers are located, and in which our data is stored, but tomorrow we might be having bad relations with them, then what is going to happen to that data.'
WhatsApp's ambitious payment services' blueprint in India has been caught in a bind over concerns around authentication and its data storage practices.
The company believes that "these changes -- which we'll continue to evaluate -- will help keep WhatsApp the way it was designed to be: a private messaging app".
On October 29, WhatsApp announced it was suing NSO Group for selling its software, Pegasus, which has the ability to compromise a device and get access to all of a target's data. Spooked by revelations that activists and journalists were spied upon by using NSO Group's spyware, many have moved to alternative messaging platforms such as Signal and Telegram.
'The startup ecosystem, the government, and the owners of large pools of Indian capital need to actively support the creation of these local champions, not pull down the teams that are trying hard to get there.'
The company said the new policy will be rolled out but the platform will allow users to read it at "their own pace".
The Delhi high court on Friday asked the Centre to reply to pleas by Facebook and WhatsApp challenging the new IT rules for social media intermediaries requiring the messaging app to "trace" chats and make provisions to identify the first originator of information.
In an interview to PTI, WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said the Facebook-owned company remains committed to privacy and security of users across India and will continue to explain to users that their messages are end-to-end encrypted.
The apex court said people value their privacy more than the value of the company which might be in trillions.
The party, however, did not say exactly when the Congress general secretary received the message.
According to WhatsApp, the spyware was developed by Israel-based NSO Group and had been used to snoop on about 1,400 users globally, including 121 users from India.
WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit in the Delhi high court challenging the government's new digital rules saying the requirement for the company to provide access to encrypted messages will break privacy protections.
The chargesheet filed at the Ernakulam judicial magistrate court claims that there is digital evidence against Mukesh in the case.
