The Indian government has told the Delhi High Court that WhatsApp was securing “trick consent” from its users for its freshly updated privacy policy to allegedly evade a data protection Bill currently in the works.
The Centre said in its affidavit before the court that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) had formed the prima facie opinion that the Facebook-owned messaging app had violated certain provisions of Competition Act, 2002 “in the garb of policy update".
What is the policy update?
WhatsApp update to its terms of service has drawn criticism as it changes the way it processes user data and partners with Facebook to integrate with products across the social media platform, allowing businesses to employ user data for targeted marketing.
If the updated privacy policy is accepted, the user would give the app permission to share user details like phone numbers and transaction data with businesses.
However, WhatsApp has repeatedly said that the update would not touch people’s communications with friends or family on the platform, clarifying that end-to-end encryption for private messages would continue, and logs of users' messaging and calling would not be kept.
What is the Centre contesting?
The government told the court that WhatsApp’s intention was to “force” unsuspecting users into accepting the updated terms and its aim was to move all existing users to the updated 2021 privacy policy before the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill becomes law.
The government claims the PDP would seek to protect individual personal data, create a framework for processing personal data and establish a data protection authority to do so.
The Centre also accused the messaging app of drawing “trick consent” from users for its new policy and sought that the court restrain WhatsApp from assailing users with constant push notifications to accept the new terms.
The government alleges that WhatsApp’s access to the personal, sensitive personal and business data of crores of Indian users and its status as an “essential digital service” made it all the more important for its privacy policy to be checked.
The Centre also contends that the new update privacy policy violates the Information Technology Rules of 2011 and the app may be blocked from implementing the new policy until a final decision on the validity of its policy is reached.
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