oppn parties WhatsApp Is Wrong In Asking All Users To Agree To Share Private Data

Story Of The Day

Workplace Discipline Does Not Require a Police Complaint
OPINIONS : Strongly Expressed

June 22, 2026

People Are Talking About

People Say TMC Is Reaping What It Had Sown

News Snippets

  • FSSAI to now train its lenses on claims like 'natural', 'heart-friendly' 'healthy' and 'no added sugar' etc to reduce instaces of misleading claims on food packaging
  • 5 killed and 18 injured as the under-construction roof of the Hanuman temple in Parbhani in Maharashtra collapses
  • Hindus in Bangladesh hold torch marches in Dhaka and other parts of the country to protest against alleged government inaction after vandalism at temples and hitting Hindu dieties with shoes during a procession
  • LIC issues notice to Suruchi Sangha (formerly controlled by TMC minister Aroop Biswas) to vacate 23 cottahs of land in Kolkata's upscale New Alipore area, which the club has allegedly poached on to hold its annual Durga Puja, within a month
  • Centre bans 16 fixed drug combinations, including painkillers, anti-biotics and skin fromulations, over safety issues
  • TMC news: Aroop Biswas and Firhad Hakim, once considered the right and left hands of Mamata Banerjee, now fall out of favour. Biswas issued showcause for writing s debit-freeze letter to HDFC Bank blocking party funds and Hakim removed from disciplinary committee
  • From Tarakeshwar in Bengal, PM Modi gives a call for 'new Bengal' and says the period of 'cut money' has ended and work has started on stalled projects in the state with the BJP government taking decisions at 'lightening speed'
  • A trader in Noida found a Rs 25l akh diamond in a Panna mine registered in his wife's name
  • 22.7 lakh to sit for NEET retest today
  • FIFA World Cup: Brazil get into the groove, score 3 against Haiti for a 3-0 win
  • FIFA World Cup: Paraguay beat Turkiye 1-0
  • FIFA World Cup: USA beat Australia 2-0 to enter knockouts and Morocco beat Scotland 1-0
  • ICC T20 Women's World Cup: India to play South Africa today
  • Nations Cup Women's Hockey: India thrash Chile 6-0 in the semifinals to set up a clash with New Zealand in the final
  • 3rd ODI versus Afghanistan: Yasashvi Jaiswal (110 not out) and Prasidh Krishna (5-23) shine as India (224 for 1) beat Afghanistan (218) by 9 wickets in the 3rd and final ODI to sepp the series 3-0
PM Modi celebrates International Yoga Day with more than 40000 people from Red Road in Kolkata /////// NEET re-test today with NTA saying it is committed to conduct it smoothly
oppn parties
WhatsApp Is Wrong In Asking All Users To Agree To Share Private Data

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-01-18 07:45:00

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

The confusion over the changes in the privacy settings of popular instant messaging app WhatsApp once again shows the urgency for a comprehensive data protection law in India. The government is not realizing the mischief that big multinational corporations in the internet space can do with consumer data. Although the government banned certain Chinese apps recently when data breach was discovered, it was a knee jerk reaction that is not going to solve the problem. Only a comprehensive data protection law on the lines of the General Data Protection Law (GDPR) of the European Union can prevent misuse of consumer data.

WhatsApp has changed its data privacy policy to allow sharing of data between the instant messaging app and its parent Facebook. Although the company has pointed out that this is applicable only for business users, it has been sending out messages to all users to accept this upgrade to its privacy policy, giving an indication that their data might also be shared. If it wanted to share the data of people or business entities using WhatsApp for commercial reasons, it could have changed the privacy policy only for them since one has to create a separate business account of the app. Suspicion about its intentions will obviously be raised if such acceptance of the changed privacy policy is across the board for all users.

To be fair to WhatsApp (as it provides free service to users), as a business entity that needs to earn money it will try to monetize its content in all possible ways. But privacy is a huge issue and Facebook knows this from the days it was drawn into the Cambridge Analytica scandal and many users left the platform fearing breach of privacy. For Facebook, the best way to get out of this mess would be to change the privacy policy and allow sharing of data only for users who register as business users in either WhatsApp or Facebook. That would be fair to both the users and the company. On the other hand, India must work to enact the Personal data Protection Bill, 2019 that has been kept on the backburner for long. That would go a long way in ensuring that companies do not play around with the personal data of users. 

Other Stories You Make Like

Editorials

Punjab's Unfinished Debate

Punjab's Unfinished Debate

 The Dancing Girl Doesn't Need a Moral Guardian

The Dancing Girl Doesn't Need a Moral Guardian

In Depth

When Power Goes, the Mask Comes Off

When Power Goes, the Mask Comes Off

Editor's Pick

Indians Lose Thousands of Crores to Cyber Fraud. Why Don't Banks Pay?

Indians Lose Thousands of Crores to Cyber Fraud. Why Don't Banks Pay?
© 2014 India Commentary. All rights reserved.