The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought a response from Facebook-owned WhatsApp and the Central government on a plea challenging the new privacy policy of the instant messaging platform.
Also read: WhatsApp pushes back policy roll out to May 15
A bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh asked the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and WhatsApp to submit their stand on the plea by March 19, the next date of hearing.
The petition sought a direction to WhatsApp to either roll back their policy, or in the alternative, provide an option to the users of their platform to opt out of it. It also asked to provide the users who have accepted the privacy policy to be given another option to choose for themselves.
The petitioners - Seema Singh, Meghan Singh and Vikram Singh - stated that WhatsApp introduced a new privacy policy on January 4, which provided for sharing information with third-party service providers and other Facebook companies.
This policy was mandatory for the users to use the platform and also mentioned that the data would be used by the company and its holding companies for them to analyse, the plea said.
String of petitions
This is the latest petition, in a string of petitions filed before different courts across the country against WhatsApp’s new privacy policy. It sought a direction to the Centre to frame guidelines or regulations to protect privacy and data of the citizens from all apps and organisations operating in India.
The petition said there should be a mechanism where the user could select each and every time data was sent out from their device, so as to inform him or her in detail each and every time what data had been transferred out from the device.
Following a huge public outcry, on January 16, WhatsApp took to Twitter to clarify that, “No one will have their account suspended or deleted on February 8 and we’ll be moving back our business plans until after May”.
