The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Sunday wrote to the Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad demanding to restrain the messaging app Whatsapp from implementing its new privacy policy or ban Whatsapp and its parent company Facebook.
Traders’ body CAIT claimed that with the new privacy policy of Whatsapp, “all kinds of personal data, payment transactions, contacts, location and other vital information of a person who is using WhatsApp will be acquired by it and can be used for any purpose by WhatsApp.”
In the letter written to Ravi Shankar Prasad, the traders’ body has stated, “the government should immediately restrict WhatsApp from implementing the new policy or put a ban on WhatsApp and its parent company Facebook.”
“The changed privacy policy of WhatsApp is an encroachment on privacy of an individual and runs against the basic fundamentals of Constitution of India and therefore the CAIT has demanded immediate intervention of the government,” said CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal.
CAIT has also mentioned that there are over 200 million Facebook users in India and enabling personal data of every user will not pose the threat to the economy of the country but also to the security of the country.
“To further increase transparency, we updated the privacy policy to describe that going forward businesses can choose to receive secure hosting services from our parent company Facebook to help manage their communications with their customers on WhatsApp. Though of course, it remains up to the user whether or not they want to message with a business on WhatsApp,” said a spokesperson in a response email to PTI.
Whatsapp spokesperson also mentioned that the update doesn’t change data sharing practices of Whatsapp with Facebook and doesn’t impact the way people communicate privately with their friends and family.
The spokesperson further stated, “WhatsApp remains deeply committed to protecting people’s privacy. We are communicating directly with users through WhatsApp about these changes so they have time to review the new policy over the course of the next month.”
“The changed privacy policy of WhatsApp is an encroachment on privacy of an individual and runs against the basic fundamentals of Constitution of India and therefore the CAIT has demanded immediate intervention of the government.
Whatsapp has been rolling a notification about the new terms and privacy policy asking users to agree to the policy in order to keep using the messaging app. As per the sources, the users who have disagreed to the new privacy policy will no longer be able to use the app from February 8 onwards.
