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Doris Yu · · 1 min readWhatsApp faces legal challenge in India over data-sharing rules
This development comes after the US-based WhatsApp said on January 4 that it reserves the right to share information about its users with its parent company, as well as with Instagram and Messenger. It then gave its users a February 8 deadline to agree to the new privacy rules.
The move has outraged its biggest market India, where the app has 400 million monthly active users. Turkey’s Competition Board has also launched an investigation into Facebook and WhatsApp and has suspended their new data-sharing rules.
Rival apps such as Signal and Telegram are seeing an increasing number of users in the face of WhatsApp’s new terms in India and Hong Kong, among other markets.
“WhatsApp has made a mockery out of our fundamental right to privacy,” the petition in India said. “This type of arbitrary behavior and browbeating cannot be accepted in a democracy and is completely ‘ultra vires’ (beyond its powers) and against the fundamental rights as enshrined in the Constitution of India.”
Editing by Collin Furtado and September Grace Mahino
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