Indian Court Questions Facebook Data Sharing Policy

An instant messaging company has registered more users in India than the population of Russia. After its merger with Facebook, the top Indian court has asked them to clarify their data sharing policy.

NEW DELHI (Sputnik) − The Supreme Court of India has sent notices to the Narendra Modi government, its telecom regulator and two prominent social media companies Facebook and WhatsApp.

They have been asked to respond to a complaint filed by an Indian that questions WhatsApp's move to share some user data with its parent company Facebook. The complainant argues over 160 million Indian WhatsApp users share critical information among each other. Therefore, it needs to safeguard data and privacy of its users.

"The Government should protect my Constitutional rights. The Telecom Regulatory of India (TRAI) says that interception of calls without government's order is illegal… But here, TRAI is doing nothing," argued Harish Salve, senior advocate in the case.

Two law graduates have challenged a September 2016 lower court order that allows WhatsApp to share user information with Facebook. WhatsApp had then just announced its intention to share the phone numbers and status information of its user base with Facebook to "improve experience across services" and "fight spam and abuse."

WhatsApp has ambitious plan to monetize its business in India that may see rapid growth as government promoting digital push to reach out Indians for implanting government schemes.

India is not the only country putting WhatsApp's new data sharing policy under the lens. Europe and the UK had also opposed the instant messaging company's new policy.

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