Inbox irritant: Spam, promotional messages flood WhatsApp user accounts

Businesses see it as a way to connect with customers; parent firm says there are easy ways to block an account

"Congratulations, your application for home loan for 4bhk aptmnt in Kyiv has approved. Please share details for money transfer.”

The absurdity of the message that Arindam Roy received on WhatsApp from an unknown number was so glaring he assumed it was a prank by one of his friends. “Who would be offering property in Kyiv in the middle of a war, and that too, to somebody living in Delhi?” thought Roy, an undergraduate student at Delhi University.    

Roy soon found out that at least three of his friends had received the same message via the messaging app. “I am surprised that besides the numerous random SMSes one receives in a day, such spam messages are now becoming a nuisance on WhatsApp,” he bemoans.

Roy is not the only one to complain. Stuti Shrivastav (name changed), head of communication at a start-up in Gurgaon, has nearly 90 unread WhatsApp messages. While several of these are from friends, family, or work-related contacts, most of the rest are advertisements for loan offers, new fashion line-ups, news and OTT subscription schemes, and mobile subscription packages, she says.

The spike in the number of spam messages on WhatsApp has been triggered by the recent changes in WhatsApp’s Business API, which is offers sevices to larger businesses. The Whatsapp Business App, launched in 2018, which has 15 million small and medium businesses (SMBs) as its users, and was one of the 30 most-downloaded apps in India by 2020. Initially, the Meta-owned app allowed companies to only send transactional updates and provide customer care services, including grievance redressals, transaction confirmations, the tracking of shipments, and the verification of orders. However, in September last year, businesses were allowed to send promotional messages as well, as part of its endeavour to let businesses gain a more personal connection with their customers.

Not everyone is complaining

The Busines App has been welcomed by SMBs. Deven Bhushan, who owns a small sweetmeat shop in Kalyani, a tier-3 town in West Bengal, sent out a short message on Vijayadashami: “Durga Puja is almost over. Have you fulfilled your yearly quota of Phuchka-fuelled romance?” The response was instantaneous, he says. “It was my son’s idea to use WhatsApp Business to connect with our younger customers. By the end of the day, we had made sales worth more than Rs 75,000 in snacks and chaat alone.”

Direct messages aren’t the only way that SMBs use WhatsApp Business to attract customers. Kerala-based traditional clay pot manufacturer Ecocraft, for instance, has added a click-to-connect-on-WhatsApp button. Thus, customers’ queries are directly routed through the company’s WhatsApp Business number. “We consider them as potential customers and generally have had a very good conversion rate,” says its founder, Ashik AbdulKhadir.

Businesses primarily driven or operated by individuals, such as Art o’Walls run by Dr Chhaya Meena, also find WhatsApp Business cost-effective and often use the app as the go-to platform for their digital outreach..    

WhatsApp’s countermeasures

• Opt-in permissions: Businesses need to give consumers the option of whether they want to opt in or block their message
• Consumers can block businesses at any time, or ‘Start’ and ‘Stop’ specific services through built-in buttons
• Feedback from users can help WhatsApp identify accounts to ban
• Businesses can send messages to only 250 customers a day
• Businesses can send messages to only 250 customers a day, until their service messages have proved valuable for their consumers
  

WhatsApp's anti-spam measures

The convenience experienced by businesses directly adds to the proliferation of promotional messages and makes more stringent precautionary measures a necessity. A Meta spokesperson told Business Standard, “Our rule is that people always need to request to receive updates before a business can message them, and we empower people with easy ways to block a business or report a problem at any time.”

WhatsApp has reinforced its opt-in permission on the Business API form as a mandatory requirement for larger businesses. Before initiating a conversation, businesses must give their users an option to either continue, block and/or report their messaging services. Opt-in permission dialogues are usually available right after the first WhatsApp message a business sends, in the form of checkboxes or option buttons. Users can also choose to opt-in on the businesses’ websites or in stores.

Entities like State Bank of India, Indian Oil Corporation, Flipkart, and Apollo Clinics, among others, have been using these tools in WhatsApp Business API to not only forward promotional messages but also let customers shop, renew subscriptions, book appointments and deliveries, as well as pay for their orders. Anand Pejawar, deputy managing director at SBI General Insurance, says, “Our larger plan is to create a holistic chatbot for our products and services, where users can buy, renew, claim as well as raise queries via customer support.”

Ruhi Bajwa (name changed), a senior communications executive at a Gurgaon-based food start-up, points to lingering issues, however. “Our company also frequently employs such tools provided by WhatsApp Business API, and they have been proven quite useful to us. But as a user of WhatsApp, I am also aware that the opt-in buttons do not always work,” she says. “I might have opted in for messages from a bank for its transactional services and end up getting its promotional messages too. Unless businesses themselves have made provisions to differentiate between the two kinds of messages, you might be opting in for one or both.”

The messaging app does have measures to block businesses after opting in. The app lets the consumer provide reasons and feedback, which is then constantly monitored by WhatsApp. If a message template such as a holiday sale coupon results in a high enough rate of people blocking or reporting the business, WhatsApp can pause the business from sending the same message to more customers. The company can also ban the business account, if needed. Brands like Swiggy and Tata Neu also offer built-in options like ‘START’ or ‘STOP’ buttons for consumers to control which services they receive. Businesses can send messages to 250 customers a day until their service messages have proved valuable.

WhatsApp has in place measures to control spam messages, like the one selling flats in Kyiv, on its general app as well. These include limits on sharing highly-forwarded messages to more than one chat at a time, letting users decide who will be able to add them to groups, and report accounts by flagging a specific message.

Need for change

Despite the several in-built tools that WhatsApp's apps and APIs offers, the messaging app's design has not caught up with its new business direction, believes Salman Waris, partner head of TMT & IP Practice at TechLegis Advocates. He points out, “Many users are now demanding message categorisation on WhatsApp — similar to Gmail — where business chats can be grouped under a promotions tab.”

Waris opines that while legally the IT Act and Rules do call for content regulation by service providers, enforcement is very slack and hence the growing problem. This might change soon. Minister of Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw has stated that the draft telecom Bill will have Know-Your-Customers (KYC) provisions to deal with unsolicited messages and spam calls on messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal.

WhatsApp’s 2021 privacy policy will be subject to greater scrutiny soon as the Supreme Court on Friday cleared the path for a probe by the Competition Commission of India.