On Tuesday, the Indian government’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) sent a strongly worded letter to WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart, asking him to withdraw the recent update to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for Indian users.
In a vague response to the letter, WhatsApp merely repeated details from its recent Twitter posts about the issue.
MeitY’s letter said the platform’s privacy policy raises grave concerns regarding the autonomy of Indian citizens. The platform was asked to reconsider its approach to information privacy, freedom of choice, and data security.
The government said exempting Europeans from the ToS update, while applying the same to Indian users is discriminatory. The WhatsApp policy will also violate the Personal Data Protection Bill once implemented.
Scripted response
Reacting to the letter, WhatsApp said it is ready to address any misinformation about its updated policy and remains available to answer questions.
In a statement to India Today, the messaging service claimed that users’ personal messages are end-to-end encrypted and not visible to Facebook. It also added the new policy doesn’t enhance Facebook’s ability to use WhatsApp’s data.
Buying time
WhatsApp’s response to the MeitY’s highly specific letter dodges concerns about data sharing, while repeating what the platform has already said in its Twitter posts so far.
However, in the aftermath of global outrage over WhatsApp’s unilateral policy changes, the company has deferred its implementation by three months. The Facebook-owned messaging service seems to believe buying time and “clarifying” things will contain the damage.
While WhatsApp’s response to MeitY does not touch upon users being left with no choice but to accept the updated terms, other messaging services such as Signal have been garnering popularity among netizens.
Signal, an open source, privacy-driven messaging app recently shot to the top spot on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store after it gained millions of users last week.
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