WhatsApp on Wednesday said it expects to facilitate the purchase of "affordable sachet-sized" health insurance through its platform by the end of the year as part of its efforts to provide users in India with greater access to financial solutions. The Facebook-owned company noted that its 'Payments' feature is now available to users across the country (currently up to 20 million users) with support from banking partners - State Bank of India, HDFC, ICICI and Axis Bank.
Top officials in key ministries, including finance and IT, are of the opinion that a sensitive payments system such as UPI should not be on a platform whose security is possibly compromised.
A first information report (FIR) has been filed against four people in connection with the suicide of a 34-year-old deputy general manager of a private firm, Atul Subhash, who died by suicide, accusing his wife, her family members, and a judge of harassment, extortion, and corruption.
The administrators or creators of a WhatsApp group cannot be held vicariously liable for any objectionable content posted on it by any of its members, the Kerala high court has held.
'Kiran ma'am, Aamir sir and my lovely audience have given us wings to fly internationally.'
In comparison, the messaging platform had banned over 16 lakh accounts of Indian users in the month of April, and 18.05 lakh such accounts in March.
Tech and startup industry bodies have again pushed back against calls by telecom operators to bring over-the-top (OTT) services under a licensing regime similar to telcos, and open them up to taxation. Ahead of public consultations on the issue later this week, the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), Nasscom and the US India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), among others, have written to the government arguing against such efforts.
The submissions were made before Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva by Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma during hearing of a petition by a lawyer against the new privacy policy of the social networking platform owned by Facebook.
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.
Prohibitory orders banning the assembly of people have been clamped in Nandanagar in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district where tension prevailed over a man allegedly making an obscene gesture towards a teenaged girl, a senior official said on Tuesday.
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.
How can a film that has a character declare that secularism is an illness be taken seriously, asks Deepa Gahlot.
The company said the new policy will be rolled out but the platform will allow users to read it at "their own pace".
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.
Once identified, these individuals are drawn into private groups where they are exposed to manipulative content, including fabricated videos depicting atrocities allegedly committed by security forces, the officials said.
Refusing to share her exact concerns, Mary Kom said she would rather discuss them in the meeting with Mandaviya and BFI top brass.
'Imagine having a conversation with your parents, where you say, "I want to break up with someone because he's bad in bed".'
Nearly 13.04 per cent voter turnout was recorded till 9 am on Wednesday in 43 assembly constituencies in Jharkhand where voting is underway in the first phase, officials said.
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers for the fourth consecutive day on Monday questioned the former principal of Kar Medical College, Sandip Ghosh in connection with their probe into the rape and murder of a woman doctor.
'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.'
The apex court said people value their privacy more than the value of the company which might be in trillions.
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.
Messages sent through Internet-based messaging service providers such as Whatsapp, Signal, and Telegram, as well as those which are encrypted, are understood to be within the Act's ambit.
The Centre on Monday told the Delhi high court that WhatsApp's new privacy policy, which is scheduled to come into effect from May 15, was being being examined at the highest level and they were seeking some clarification from the instant messaging platform on the issue.
While the users of the three social media platforms remained clueless as they repeatedly received error messages for most part of the day, the stocks of Silicon Valley firm Facebook dropped by nearly five per cent as a result.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday dismissed a fake letter being circulated on social media in connection with the ongoing probe into the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata.
'Though a foreigner on campus, she carried herself with confidence.'
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 new IT rules require large digital platforms -- with over five million users -- to publish compliance reports every month, mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken.
The Mysuru-Darbhanga Express train was given a green signal to pass through the main line, however, it entered a loop line already occupied by the freight train.
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.
A division bench headed by Justice Z A Haq and A B Borkar noted that an administrator of a WhatsApp group has only limited powers of adding or deleting members to the group and does not have the power to regulate or censor the content posted in the group.
Sources further said that WhatsApp's policy update would also be evaluated in the context of the current legal framework.
The directions follow a report by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, which has seen a new pattern of transnational cyber-enabled financial fraud and investment scam, impersonating as stockbrokers and company executives.
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.
A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Prithviraj Chavan questioned as to how the police, that usually go to any extent to nab an accused, are unable to arrest them in this case.
Apart from physical access to handsets, metadata and backups are two common ways in which private communications can be broken.
Much of the discussion is happening at a "family level, not a corporate level". That means it is an Ambani or a Goenka in direct talks with Johar.
"I'm amazed channels are bothering with exit polls especially after the fiasco of the recent general elections. I'm ignoring all the noise on channels, social media, WhatsApp etc. because the only numbers that matter will be revealed on the 8th of Oct. The rest is just time pass," Abdullah, a former chief minister, wrote on X.
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