After a Public Interest Litigation was filed by two students contending that Whatsapp had sought to suddenly change its Privacy Policy thereby compromising the rights of its users, the Delhi High Court has issued notice to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Livelaw reports.
According to the PIL, Whatsapp is looking to take away the protection to privacy of details and data of the users and sharing the same with Facebook and other group companies.
The petitioners, Karmanya Singh Sareen and Shreya Sethi, allege that the consent taken from the users is “deceptive” as most are not capable of reading or comprehending the terms and conditions.
They have further stated that the new Privacy Policy is in stark contrast to the earlier one existing from 7th July 2012.
The new policy, likely to come into effect from September 25, is said to compromise the rights of users and render them vulnerable. The petition demands that Whatsapp should not reveal or share any details of users, including photos, messages, audio, video or any other information to anyone else unless users are willing to write to Whatsapp, giving their explicit consent.
Whatsapp says that no messages or photos will be shared. However, it claims that it will “coordinate” more to help improve the ad experience on Facebook and elsewhere. There are no clear answers so far on how Whatsapp plans to do this.