WhatsApp Banned About 2 Million Indian Accounts In May-June

WhatsApp has banned nearly 2 million Indian accounts while it received 345 grievance reports between May 15 and June 15, the Facebook-owned messaging service said in its compliance report under the New IT Rules.

“Our top focus is preventing accounts from sending harmful or unwanted messages at scale. We maintain advanced capabilities to identify these accounts sending a high or abnormal rate of messages and banned two million accounts in India alone from May 15-June 15 attempting this kind of abuse,” WhatsApp said on Thursday.

WhatsApp said more than 95% of such bans are due to the unauthorised use of automated or bulk messaging (spam). The vast majority of these accounts are banned proactively, without relying on any user reports. About eight million accounts are banned/disabled globally on an average per month.

“We expect to publish subsequent editions of the report 30-45 days after the reporting period to allow sufficient time for data collection and validation,” WhatsApp said in the report.

The Facebook-owned company said that the number of accounts banned has risen significantly since 2019 as the sophistication of systems has increased. The platform also said that it is catching more accounts even as it believes that there are more attempts to send bulk or automated messages.

To detect and prevent abuse on its platform, WhatsApp relies on available “unencrypted information” including user reports, profile photos, group photos and descriptions as well as advanced AI tools and resources besides the behavioural signals from accounts.

In the report, WhatsApp said it had received 345 reports in total, cutting across categories such as ban appeal, account support, product support, safety issues and others.

Significant social media intermediaries like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp with over five million users have to publish compliance reports every month, mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken.