WhatsApp banned over 20 lakh accounts in India in October

WhatsApp has released its fifth transparency report, in accordance with the IT Rules 2021. In the report, which is for the month of October, mentions that the company banned over 20 lakh accounts in India. Among these, only 18 accounts were banned based on user reports, and over 20,69,000 were banned using WhatsApp’s own tools.

The report also mentions that WhatsApp users sent 500 grievances to the company, out of which 248 were appeals against an account ban. 146 were related to account support, 53 to product support, and 11 were related to safety.

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Out of these, WhatsApp says that 18 reports were acted upon, all from the ban appeal category. It is important to note here that taking action could mean banning a user based on a report, or repealing a ban and restoring an account on the basis of an appeal.

In September, similarly, WhatsApp had said that it banned over 22 lakh accounts in India. For that month, it received 309 ban appeals, out of which 50 were acted upon. For the month of August, the company had banned over 20 lakh accounts in India as well.