NEW DELHI – The Indian government notified WhatsApp of pending consequences if it fails to rescind a controversial privacy policy update, which includes mandatory sharing of user data with parent company Facebook, government sources told Sputnik yesterday.
According to the sources, the Indian Electronics and Information Technology Ministry sent a letter to WhatsApp on Tuesday which said that the new policy violated the country’s laws and that action would be taken against the company if no satisfactory response was received within seven days.
The WhatsApp privacy update went into effect last week. Users who did not accept the new terms would eventually stop being able to read and send messages and only see notifications about incoming texts and calls.
The initial plan was to suspend the non-consenting accounts altogether, but user uproar made WhatsApp ease the terms and delay the implementation. – Bernama, May 20, 2021
