Meta-owned social media app WhatsApp is threatening to withdraw from India if the Indian government requires it to change its end-to-end encryption and user data policies, as reported by The International News.
The company, led by Mark Zuckerberg, is contesting India's 2021 IT regulations at the Delhi High Court, which mandate messaging services to disclose the sender's identity.
Now, WhatsApp and other Meta platforms employ end-to-end encryption, ensuring only the sender and recipient can access messages, making compliance with the regulation challenging.
Specifically, WhatsApp opposes the requirement to share user data with the government and seeks to declare that the rule is unconstitutional. Tejas Karia, representing WhatsApp in court, argues that decrypting messages and storing them for an extended period, as mandated by the rule, would be impractical and unprecedented globally.
READ NEXT : Apple Pulls WhatsApp and Threads From China App Store in Response to Orders From Beijing
Why the Indian Government Asks User Data
Per The Economic Times, the Indian government wants access to user data for national security and law enforcement efforts. By tracing chats and identifying the originator of information, they aim to regulate online communication and curb the spread of misinformation, hate speech, and other illicit activities.
Should the exit of WhatsApp from India happen, it won't be the first, as VCPost also noted that Apple already removed it and Threads from China's App Store.
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