New Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has written to Will Cathcart, Global CEO of WhatsApp to withdraw the proposed changes to the Privacy Policy of the Facebook-owned messaging application for Indian users.
The CEO has been asked to furnish responses to the government’s query regarding the privacy, data transfer and sharing policies, sources said today.
The Ministry raised concerns of information security of the users as the new policy of WhatsApp proposes to share the metadata of users’ chat with Business accounts with other Facebook companies.
It would create a honeypot of information about users with Facebook group which can create security risks and vulnerabilities for the users.
MEITY further objected to the “all-or-nothing” approach of WhatsApp that forces users to accept the new service terms and privacy policies, without giving an option to the users to opt-out of this proposed change of integrating user data with other Facebook companies.
Here the Government has reminded WhatsApp about the principles of privacy and consent laid down by Supreme Court in the Puttaswamy vs. Union of India (2017) judgment.
Ministry has further asked WhatsApp as to why they have brought about such significant changes when the Parliament of India is already considering the Personal Data Protection Bill.
This Bill, which is at an advance stage of consideration by the Joint Select Committee of both houses of the Parliament strongly follows the principle of “purpose limitation” with regard to the data processing.
Purpose Limitation simply means that companies can use the data of users only for that specific purpose which it has taken the consent of the users.
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This wide integration of data of Indian users with other Facebook companies would make it difficult for WhatsApp to follow this principle, if this Bill becomes a law soon.