Govt mulls third notice to Whatsapp

Origin of messages: govt mulls notice to Whatsapp

Despite WhatsApp's insistence that it can't introduce a feature to trace the origin of the messages on its platform, the government is likely to send third notice to the messaging app to take steps towards traceability of messages.

Though the I-T Ministry had earlier sent two notices to the Facebook-owned company, it had turned down the demand and said introducing the traceability of messages on its platform will impact end to end encryption and violate the privacy of users.

The government feels that technical solutions can be found to trace the origin of a message, without compromising end-to-end encryption, said an official from the IT Ministry.

Officials also maintained that though they did not want to trace the origin of every message sent on social media platform, at least few messages, which had gone viral or crossed a certain threshold, should be able to trace, the official added.

Following multiple incidents of mob-lynching across the country triggered fake news circulated on WhatsApp, the IT Ministry had asked the company to take steps to track the original sender of such provocative messages.