WhatsApp banned 2 million Indian accounts during May 15-June 15 period

WhatsApp has banned 2 million accounts from Indian users between May 15 and June 15, with the majority of them being banned due to unauthorised use of automated or bulk messaging and spamming users, the messaging platform said in its first report as mandated by the new IT rules. These accounts were identified with the India country code identifier.

The messaging platform bans or disables over 8 million accounts on an average every month globally.

“We are particularly focused on prevention because we believe it is much better to stop harmful activity from happening in the first place than to detect it after harm has occurred, WhatsApp said in the report, in accordance with Rule 4(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.