WhatsApp India bans 7.45 million accounts, says it collected more than 4,000 complaints in April
Mobile messaging platform WhatsApp banned 74,52,500 accounts in India between April 1 and April 30, of which 24,69,700 were proactively banned before user notifications. The company has received more than 4,000 complaints related to account support, ban complaints, product support, security and more.
On Thursday, the company published its April report on June 1 in accordance with Rule 4(1)d) and Rule 3a(7) of the IT Rules (Intermediate Guidelines and Code of Digital Media Ethics) 2021. The report noted that WhatsApp , which falls under the Under the Meta umbrella, reported 4,377 complaints in April. These include account support, ban appeal, product support, data security and other support (requests that cannot be consistently categorized).
WhatsApp took action in response to a complaint about the ban on 223 of these accounts. “We respond to all complaints we receive, except in cases where the complaint is deemed to be a duplicate of a previous ticket. Action is taken when an account is banned or a previously banned account is reinstated as a result of a complaint,” the report states.
WhatsApp took the action after receiving orders from the Grievance Committee (GAC), which began its work on March 1. The committee was created because there were frequent complaints from online users who either did not know who to contact to solve the problem or were dissatisfied with the platform’s response.
According to the report, WhatsApp has complied with two orders received from the GAC in April. The report stated that in addition to listening to and responding to user concerns through the complaint channel, the company uses technologies and resources to prevent malicious activity online.
“Abuse detection works in three stages of account lifestyles: during registration, during messages, and in response to negative feedback we receive in the form of user reports and bans. The analyst team is working to improve these systems to assess evolving cases and help improve our effectiveness over time.”
While the platform noted that the accounts were banned in April, the platform said it implemented the process using an abuse detection method that includes measures to validate negative feedback from users.
