Centre orders WA to withdraw its new privacy policy; questions why different policy for Indians
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New Delhi, January 20: Expressing the strong objection over the What's app's new privacy changes, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology asked Mark Zuckerberg owned What's app to withdraw the proposed policy. IT Ministry on Monday sent the stern letter to the What's app CEO Will Cathcart and asked him to respect to date security of Indian Users.
In a letter, the ministry has raised several questions and objections. The letter notes that sharing of some data — including business data — generated with WhatsApp with Facebook will weaken the information security of the users.
The letter states, “The changes to the WhatsApp Privacy Policy and Terms of Service outline the vast amounts and categories of data that is collected by WhatsApp and how it will be shared with other Facebook companies. These changes enable WhatsApp, and other Facebook Companies, to make invasive and precise inferences about users which may not be reasonably foreseen or expected by users in the ordinary course of accessing these services.”
The ministry also noted that such policy would entail the dissolution of any meaningful distinction between Facebook and What's app. In strong words government, a emphasized its sovereignty and said that “any unilateral changes to the WhatsApp Terms of Service and Privacy would not be fair and acceptable.”
“These changes notify users that WhatsApp will collect highly invasive and granular metadata, such as time, frequency and duration of interactions, group names, payments and transaction data, online status, location indicators, as well as any messages shared by users with business accounts. Further, these changes indicate that this information will be shared with other Facebook Companies for an extremely expansive and broad set of purposes, without providing users with an option to opt-out of this integration across social media platforms,” it adds.
It should be noted that what's app has only applied in India, they remained unchanged for Europe. Pointing out that the ministry has raised the question about companies "differential treatment" to its users in India. The letter reads that "This differential and discriminatory treatment of Indian and European users is attracting serious criticism and betrays a lack of respect for the rights and interests of Indian citizens, who form a substantial portion of WhatsApp’s user base. Such differential treatment is prejudicial to the interests of the Indian users and is viewed with serious concern by the Government.”
The government of India also noted the way the company was being unfair to the Indian users. " . By not providing Indian users with the ability to opt-out of this data sharing with other Facebook Companies, WhatsApp is treating users with an ‘all-or-nothing’ approach,” ministry added.
The government has handed over a detailed questionnaire to the messaging app to get details about its data-sharing protocols and business practices. They seek answers on concerns like the exact categories of data that it collects from users in India, the permissions and user consent sought by the app, and how each of these is going to be used.
1)The government has asked the company to disclose the details of the services provided by the WhatsApp application in India.
2) Further it also asked to disclose the exact categories of data that the WhatsApp application collects from Indian users.
3) Does WhatsApp conduct profiling of Indian users on basis of their of your application? What nature of profiling is conducted?
4) Details of Data Security Policy, Information Security Policy, Cyber Security
5) Is there any difference between the privacy policy of the WhatsApp application in India and in Other countries?
6) GoI also seeks to know whether WhatsApp has provided access to its user data to a third party.
7) Details about the server when data of Indian users is transmitted or hosted.
The ministry has the company to respond within a week.
Whatsapps new policy has created controversy since it has been announced. The new policy has also been challenged in the Delhi High Court. Following This halted the rollout of its controversial privacy policy saying users will be provided more time to ‘understand the policy update’. As part of its new privacy policy, it would share user data with other Facebook companies.