WhatsApp banned 36 lakh accounts in India in December: Report

WhatsApp has released its ‘Monthly India Report’ for the month of December. In the report, Meta-owned company has claimed that the instant messaging app banned more than 36 lakh malicious WhatsApp accounts in India.
WhatsApp says that out of these 3,677,000 accounts were banned, it proactively banned 1,389,000 of these accounts between December 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022, before any reports from users. It is to be noted that an Indian account is identified via +91 phone number.

“WhatsApp is an industry leader in preventing abuse, among end-to-end encrypted messaging services. Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state of the art technology, data scientists and experts, and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said.
WhatsApp releases the monthly report in compliance with the IT Rules, 2021.
“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 3.6 million accounts in the month of December,” the spokesperson added.

More than 1,600 reports received
The messaging platform received 1,607 reports in the month of December in India and acted upon 166 of those accounts.
How WhatsApp tackles abuse
WhatsApp explains that ‘Accounts Actioned’ denotes reports where the company took remedial action. This means that the accounts were either banned or a previously banned account was restored as a result of the complaint. It also says that some reports may have been reviewed but not included as ‘Actioned’.
Last month, WhatsApp banned over 37 lakh accounts in India. It received 946 reports in November and acted upon 74 of them.