Those concerns arise from arrests of Indian citizens for posting public comments on social media criticizing the regime. Lawyers and digital rights advocates say that collection of large amounts of user data messages could thwart free speech. While these problems are hard to solve, breaking into an encryption and thus violating user privacy is not the correct approach to addressing the government’s concerns about fake news and mob violence, says Nikhil Pahwa, a New Delhi-based digital rights activist. While WhatsApp has aided faster communication through its user-friendly interface, it also has become a platform of choice to spread misinformation in India, including abuse of the platform to distribute fake news and organize mob violence, experts contend. A possible scenario could be that WhatsApp bends encryption rules only for the Indian market and starts collecting data on messages exchanged between users, experts say. They're not going to back out of the Indian market,” says Woodward. “I can't imagine Facebook is not going to be in India. It’s unlikely that Facebook and WhatsApp will withdraw from India and its huge social media market even if they don’t prevail in court in India. India has over 500 million WhatsApp subscribers, highest in the world. Usage of WhatsApp in India has grown exponentially as smartphones have become cheaper and Internet access more affordable. They (WhatsApp) don't want to be in that business and have to secure that data,” says Matthew Green, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. “Having this huge amount of data is vulnerable to being stolen, or accessed maliciously. The update to the privacy policy has also resulted in two legal petitions in Indian courts.The reason tech companies have traditionally kept away from keeping data is because there is a huge cost involved in maintaining its privacy. WhatsApp has launched a media advertising campaign in India to calm worried users. The company said last week it would delay the new policy launch to May from February, after facing criticism from users in India and elsewhere to the new terms. The ministry asked WhatsApp to respond to 14 questions including on the categories of user data it collected, whether it profiled customers based on usage and cross-border data flows. "This differential and discriminatory treatment of Indian and European users is attracting serious criticism and betrays a lack of respect for the rights and interest of Indian citizens who form a substantial portion of WhatsApp's user base," it said. It is of "great concern" that Indian users have not been given the choice to opt out of this data sharing with Facebook companies and they are being given less choice compared to the app's European users, the tech ministry letter said. 4 it could share limited user data with Facebook and its group firms. Those aspirations could take a hit if Indians switch to rival messengers such as Signal and Telegram, downloads of which have surged after WhatsApp said on Jan. With 400 million users in India, WhatsApp has big plans for the country's growing digital payments space, including selling health insurance via partners. California-based Facebook invested $5.7 billion last year in the digital unit of Indian conglomerate Reliance (RELI.NS) with a huge part of that aimed at drawing in tens of millions of traditional shop owners to use digital payments via WhatsApp.
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