WhatsApp’s troubles with India over its updated privacy policies is continuing as the Competition Commission of India (CCI), an anti-trust watchdog has announced a new probe into the Facebook-owned messaging service. The probe is aimed at investigating WhatsApp’s new privacy policy for its violating competition laws, before it goes live in May 2021.
WhatsApp first introduced the problematic privacy policy back in January, 2021 and nearly instantly rolled back the changes after receiving a lot of backlash. Since then, WhatsApp has decided to re-introduce their updated terms of service (TOS) and privacy policy with a new information banner in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, the Government of India requested WhatsApp to withdraw the update as it essentially robs Indians of the choice of giving up their user data to Facebook. Now, the Competition Commission of India has ordered a probe into WhatsApp, investigating their breach of various anti-trust laws. According to the commission, WhatsApp’s privacy policy is “neither fully transparent nor based on voluntary and specific user consent”.
WhatsApp has responded to the Commission’s probe order, stating that they will co-operate with them in the investigation.