The Supreme Court on Monday will begin to examine the privacy policy of messaging service WhatsApp. A five-judge Constitution bench will hear a petition filed by two users, who alleged that the right to privacy of more than 15.7 crore Indians had been violated by WhatsApp sharing its users’ personal information with its parent company Facebook.
The hearing comes at a time when the popular messaging app was fined more than $3.3 million by an Italian court for forcing users to share their personal data with Facebook, which had acquired WhatsApp in 2014. Data protection authorities of the European Union have asked the firm to stop sharing users’ information with Facebook over concerns about the validity of consent.
“WhatsApp User Policy now allows it to retain any videos, pictures, etc, which are widely circulated,” said senior advocate Harish Salve, who is representing the petitioners. “This means they are snooping, picking up data, and sharing it with its parent company Facebook,” DNA reported.
The company had unveiled its new privacy policy in August last year, allowing it to share some user data, including phone numbers, with Facebook. But WhatsApp’s legal representatives had earlier refuted concerns about the application’s privacy policy and said messages on the service had end-to-end encryption that prevented even the company from gaining access to them.
The bench that will hear the matter comprises justices Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy, AK Sikri, MM Shantanagoudar and AM Khanwilkar.
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