The Union government on Friday urged the Delhi high court to restrain WhatsApp from implementing its new privacy policy, contending the rules were vague, failed to protect user data from being shared with third parties, and did not guarantee deletion of all data once users withdrew their consent.
A bench of chief justice DN Patel and justice Jasmeet was told by the Centre in an affidavit that though the rules framed in 2011 under the Information Technology Act prohibits sharing of information with third parties, WhatsApp has stated that data and information will be freely shared with and received by other companies owned by Facebook.
Under the new policy, users can either accept it or exit the app, but they cannot opt not to share their data with other Facebook-owned or third party apps.
The Centre, in its affidavit, said, “It is humbly prayed that in view of the above submissions, the Respondent No. 2 (WhatsApp) may be restrained from implementing its new privacy policy and terms of service dated January 4, 2021 from February 8, 2021 or any subsequent date pending adjudication by this court.”
“WhatsApp has stated that data and information will be freely shared with and received from other Facebook companies. Since the contract of the user is only with WhatsApp, all other Facebook companies are ‘third parties’ and any inter-sharing of data obtained by it will amount to violation of the restriction on further disclosure,” it added.
The controversy relates to the company’s decision in January to enforce a new privacy policy that will allow it to share some data about users’ interactions with business accounts with its parent company Facebook, and that accepting these terms were mandatory in order to use the service.