Whatsapp banned over 17 lakh Indian accounts

Popular instant messaging app Whatsapp banned more than 17 lakh accounts registered with Indian mobile numbers in the month of November, 2021. In its latest compliance report in accordance with the IT Rules 2021 published this month, the Meta-owned platform said it made the decision to ban accounts using the abuse detection approach that includes feedback from other users and their appeals through the ‘Report’ feature in the app. From the grievance redressal tool offered by the messaging platform, there were a total of 602 complaints. Out of these, Whatsapp took action against 36 accounts. There were around 357 appeals for bans out of which 36 were actioned. The total number of banned accounts, which is 17,59,000, includes these 36 accounts. Other categories for which the reports were received are Account support, Product support, and Safety, among others. No action was taken for the appeals in these categories, Whatsapp said in its report.