WhatsApp Says It Banned 2.069 Million Accounts in India in October, Received 248 User Ban Appeals

WhatsApp banned over 2 million accounts in India in the month of October, the latest transparency report suggests. In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, WhatsApp has published the fifth monthly report for the month of October. The report details user complaints received and the corresponding action taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp's own preventive actions to combat abuse on the platform. 18 accounts were actioned by WhatsApp based on user reports. Almost all of the 2.069 million accounts that were banned in October were tracked using WhatsApp's own tools.

The latest WhatsApp India Monthly report under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 details the number of accounts ban in the month of October. A total of 500 grievances were received by users out of which 146 were related to account support, 248 were related to ban appeals, 53 were related to product support, 11 were related to safety, and the rest of the 42 were related to other support. Out of these, WhatsApp says that only 18 requests were actioned, all of which belonged to the ban appeal category. It is important to note that taking action denotes either banning an account or a previously banned account being restored as a result of the user complaint.

To send grievances to WhatsApp, users can email to grievance_officer_wa@support.whatsapp.com or send a letter to the India Grievance Officer via post. As mentioned, WhatsApp also has its own tools and resources deployed to stop abuse and other harmful activity. Most of the 2.069 million accounts banned in October were due to this abuse detection process.

In September, WhatsApp claimed to have banned 2.209 million accounts in India. It received 309 ban appeals from users, out of which only 50 were actioned. Similarly, 2.07 million accounts were banned in August by using WhatsApp's deployed tools to prevent abuse on the platform.