WhatsApp bans 18.58 lakh Indian accounts in January, says report

Mobile messaging platform WhatsApp banned 18.58 lakh Indian accounts in January on the basis of complaints received from users through its grievances division and the company's own mechanism to prevent and detect law violators, according to a monthly report published on Tuesday.

WhatsApp received grievances against 495 Indian accounts which appealed to ban 285 accounts, out of which 24 were banned.

The majority of the 18.58 lakh accounts were banned based on harmful behaviour detected through tools and resources deployed by the company in its app.

"The data shared (banning of 18.58 lakh accounts)...highlights the number of Indian accounts banned by WhatsApp between 1 January, 2022 - 31 January, 2022 using the aforementioned abuse detection approach, which also includes action taken in furtherance to negative feedback received from users via our 'Report' feature," said WhatsApp's India Monthly Report under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2022.

The company identifies Indian accounts via ISD code of +91 prefixed before the 10-digit mobile number.