WhatsApp Bans 2.9 Million Accounts in India in January 2023

Meta-owned social messaging platform WhatsApp banned over 2.9 million accounts in India in the month of January 2023.

According to a monthly report, between January 1 and January 31, a total of 2,918,000 WhatsApp accounts were banned. 1,038,000 of these accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from users.

Reportedly, the messaging platform banned the accounts to "combat abuse."

"WhatsApp is an industry leader in preventing abuse, among end-to-end encrypted messaging services," a spokesperson of the social messaging platform said.

In order to keep "our users safe on our platform," WhatsApp over the years has consistently invested in artificial intelligence and other state-of-the-art technology, data scientists and experts, the spokesperson further said.

"In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we have published our report for the month of January 2023. This user-safety report contains details of the user complaints received and the corresponding action taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp's own preventive actions to combat abuse on our platform. As captured in the latest monthly report, WhatsApp banned over 2.9 million accounts in January," he added.

The most popular messaging platform, which has nearly 500 million users in the country, received 1,461 complaint reports in January in the country, and the records "actioned" were 195.

The company said, "We are particularly focused on prevention because we believe it is much better to stop harmful activity from happening in the first place than to detect it after harm has occurred."

The abuse detection operates at three stages of an account's lifestyle: at registration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback, which we receive in the form of user reports and blocks.

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