‘People value privacy more than money’

THE COURT SAID WHATSAPP NEEDED TO DISCLOSE THE KIND OF USER DATA THAT WOULD BE SHARED WITH OTHER COS UNDER ITS NEW POLICY

The Supreme Court on Monday told Whatsapp and Facebook that Indians valued their privacy more than the trillions of dollars the social media firms were worth, even as the companies sought to argue that the apprehension over a contentious new privacy policy was a “red herring”.

A top court bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) SA Bobde, decided to examine Whatsapp 2021 privacy policy by the messaging service and issued notices, saying the social messaging app needed to disclose the kind of user data that would be shared with other companies under its new policy.

“People in India have grave apprehensions about loss of privacy. You may be a $2-3 trillion company, but people value their privacy more than that. And it is our duty to protect people’s privacy,” observed the bench, which also included justices AS

NEW DELHI:

Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian.

In January, Whatsapp renewed its terms of service and privacy policy, which were to initially come into effect on February 8, but have since been deferred to May 15. The company said it will share details about users’ conversations with business accounts, and that accepting these terms were mandatory. Anyone not agreeing to the terms will need to delete their accounts, the company said at the time, triggering a seeming shift by many to rivals such as Telegram and Signal.