India wants more information on WhatsApp privacy policy

India’s Supreme Court has sent a notice to the central government, telecom regulator TRAI, as well as Facebook and WhatsApp. To infringe social networking sites WhatsApp and Facebook for its user’s personal communication.

Chief Justice Khehar asked the petitioner why WhatsApp, a private company, should protect the privacy of a user. To which the petitioner, said that WhatsApp with over 160 million users in India, has become a utility service and thus, it needs to safeguard data and privacy of its users.

The high court verdict had come on the plea by Sareen and Sethi, who had challenged WhatsApp new privacy policy. The high court had also directed the Centre and TRAI to examine the feasibility of bringing the functioning of internet messaging applications like WhatsApp under statutory regulatory framework.

It is also the responsibility of the state to guarantee and ensure the protection of the personal and private data and information of these millions of citizens, when they use such modes of communications to engage in conversations and exchange private and confidential data and information”.

The court has also agreed to look into the subject at length in mid-May. WhatsApp announced in October that it would begin sharing phone number as well as phone numbers of people in a user’s contact list and status information of a user with Facebook to “improve experience across services” and “fight spam and abuse.”

WhatsApp had also added that neither it, nor Facebook, can see the contents of communication including messages, photos, voice notes and calls.