The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology will send a notice to WhatsApp on the issue of spam calls from unknown international numbers, Minister of State for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Thursday, asserting that the onus of ensuring user safety lies with digital platforms.
The digital platforms are responsible and accountable for ensuring the safety of “digital nagriks”, the Minister said, adding that the government will respond to every instance of alleged misuse or alleged breach of users’ privacy.
The Minister's comments assume significance as WhatsApp users in India have reported a massive surge in incoming international spam calls over the past few days. Many users complained on Twitter that a major chunk of these spam calls had country codes belonging to Indonesia (+62), Vietnam (+84), Malaysia (+60), Kenya (+254) and Ethiopia (+251).
Mr. Chandrasekhar had said on Tuesday that the Ministry was taking note of the matter and will send a notice to WhatsApp on the issue.
He also said that the government is mulling guidelines on what should be the permissions for preloaded apps. If there is an issue of spam, it is certainly an issue WhatsApp should look at or any messenger platform should look at, he added. “Government will respond to every alleged misuse or alleged breach of privacy,” the Minister said.
One of the problems being examined at this point is also how these numbers are accessed by scammers.
“How are they able to identify which numbers are on WhatsApp... are they doing it blindly?... is it some database they have got? If there is a database it is a violation of privacy, or if not are they are doing it through a bot... sending messages to random numbers... But that is certainly something platforms will be asked to look at,” he said.
Mr. Chandrasekhar tweeted on Wednesday that the government will investigate a claim that WhatsApp accessed the microphone of smartphone users while their phones were not in use. The Minister had said the government will examine the alleged breach of privacy even as the new Digital Personal Data Protection Bill was being readied.
Later, WhatsApp said in a tweet, “We believe this is a bug on Android that misattributes information in their Privacy Dashboard and have asked Google to investigate and remediate.” The company also claimed that users have full control over their mic settings.
A WhatsApp spokesperson said, “Protecting the privacy and security of users is fundamental to Meta and to WhatsApp. We continue to provide several safety tools within WhatsApp like Block & Report, consistently build user safety education and awareness, as well as, proactively weed out bad-actors from our platform. However, bad actors find different ways to scam users. By giving a missed call, they lead curious users to call or message back only to get scammed.”
“Therefore, we have quickly ramped up our AI & ML systems to bring down such incidents significantly. Our new enforcement will reduce the current calling rate by at least 50% and we expect to be able to control the current incidence effectively,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
SRO for online gambling
To a question on some online gaming platforms opposing any idea of the self-regulatory organisation (SRO) backed by the association IAMAI, the Minister said it has already been clarified during the consultation process that no existing industry organisation can be an SRO.
“SRO has to be notified by the Ministry, which means SRO has to be approved by the Ministry as meeting criteria laid down in online gaming rules. There will be SRO that will be formed... 100 will apply, and three will be selected based on who is most transparent, inclusive and who represents most stakeholders and who is more credible,” the Minister said.
On the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, Mr. Chandrasekhar said he is hopeful that it will be introduced in the coming session of Parliament.
