JOIN USWhatsApp puts privacy policy on hold till data protection bill
Facebook-owned WhatsApp on Friday told the Delhi High Court that it would put its updated privacy policy on hold until the Data Protection Bill came into force.
Senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for WhatsApp submitted before a bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Jyoti Singh that the company has "voluntarily agreed to put update on hold".
He said the Union government felt that the WhatsApp Privacy Policy was against Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules 2011.
"We replied to the notice by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology seeking a response, saying that WhatsApp will not limit functionality for some time and continue to show users the update," he said.
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"We will maintain this approach until Data Protection Bill comes into force. We have voluntarily agreed to put update on hold till then," Salve added.
The counsel was arguing against a single judge bench order refusing to interfere with the investigation by the Competition Commission of India into WhatsApp's updated policy.
He said the challenge to privacy policy and that to CCI order for probe were different.
He said the vacation bench had refused to stay a June 4 notice of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) seeking more information about the WhatsApp's new privacy policy.
On June 20, they said no injunction is granted, please file your reply. We filed a partial reply and wrote back on July 5 asking for more time to reply, he said.
"The government has asked to shut down the policy. We have said we will not enforce it till Data Protection Bill comes out. That is open-ended because we dont know when the Bill is going to come out," he said.
"We have said we will not do this for a while. Suppose the Bill allows me to do it, we will have completely different ramifications," he added.
Last month, the court has refused to stay notice issued by the Competition Commission of India, asking the Facebook's owned WhatsApp to furnish certain information in relation to the probe being ordered in March on the instant messaging app's new updated privacy policy.
The CCI had on March 24 ordered probe into the updated privacy policy of WhatsApp for breaching the antitrust law. “CCI is of prima facie opinion that the ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ nature of privacy policy and terms of service of WhatsApp and the information-sharing stipulations mentioned therein, merit a detailed investigation in view of the market position and market power enjoyed by WhatsApp,” the CCI order stated.
The CCI in January had on its own decided to look into WhatsApp's new privacy policy on the basis of news reports related to sharing of users data with the parent company.