WhatsApp bans 74 lakh Indian accounts in April to combat abuse

The details were revealed in the Monthly Report filed by the company as part of Information Technology Rules 2021.

“In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we’ve published our report for the month of April 2023. This user-safety report contains details of the user complaints received and the corresponding action taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp’s own preventive actions to combat abuse on our platform. As captured in the latest Monthly Report, WhatsApp banned over 7.4 million accounts in the month of April and over 2.4 million of these accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from users,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said according to news agency ANI.

New privacy features offered by WhatsApp

Meanwhile, in its bid to ensure more privacy for its users, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently unveiled a new WhatsApp feature called ‘Chat Lock’ which ensures safer chats with selected users. The feature allows the users to secure most intimate conversations in a separate folder with passwords.

When someone messages you and the chat is locked, the content of the messages and sender details will remain hidden until the passwords for the selected chats are entered.

“We’re excited to bring to you a new feature we’re calling Chat Lock, which lets you protect your most intimate conversations behind one more layer of security,” Mark Zuckerberg said while announcing the feature.

“Locking a chat takes that thread out of the inbox and puts it behind its own folder that can only be accessed with your device password or biometric, like a fingerprint. It also automatically hides the contents of that chat in notifications too,” he added.

(With agency inputs)

Updated: 01 Jun 2023, 07:56 PM IST