February 18, 2021
The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology Technology sent a letter to WhatsApp last month, interrogating changes the Facebook-owned messaging app had made to its privacy policy. MediaNama has obtained a copy of the letter under the RTI Act. “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,” MEITY said in the letter. “Whether this will enable better provision of services to users or not is besides the point, the issue is the impact it has on informational privacy, data security and user choice.”