WhatsApp bans over 18 lakh accounts in India in January: Here’s why

WhatsApp has released the latest report of the accounts banned in India in the month of January. The monthly report published in accordance with the IT Rules claims that 18,58,000 accounts have been banned in India in the period from 1 January, 2022 to 31 January, 2022.

The Meta-owned instant messaging platform shared the report on a monthly basis. While most of the accounts banned are due to violation of WhatsApp’s policies, the app also takes actions on the grievances reported by other users in India.

As part of the grievance redressal, WhatsApp received total 285 requests. Out of these requests, the application banned 24 total accounts.

WhatsApp considered all grievances received, except in cases where a grievance is deemed to be a duplicate of a previous ticket. An account is ‘actioned’ when an account is banned or a previously banned account is restored, as a result of a complaint.

How are these grievances reported

There are two ways how WhatsApp registers grievances:

-One is via e-mails sent to grievance_officer_wa@support.whatsapp.com regarding violations of WhatsApp’s Terms of Service, or questions about accounts on WhatsApp, published in the Help Center.

-Secondly, the mails that are sent to the India Grievance Officer via post.

In addition to responding to and actioning on user complaints through the grievance channel, WhatsApp also deploys tools and resources to prevent harmful behaviour on the platform. WhatsApp claims that the app is focused on prevention because they believe it is much better to stop harmful activity from happening than to detect it after harm has occurred.

WhatsApp’s abuse detection is the primary parameter used to ban accounts. The abuse detection operates at three stages of an account’s lifestyle: at registration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback. The feedback is received in the form of user reports and blocks.

A team of analysts augments these systems to evaluate edge cases and help improve effectiveness over time.

What to do if your account is banned

WhatsApp might not issue a warning before banning your account. If your account is banned, you’ll see the following message when trying to access WhatsApp: “Your phone number is banned from using WhatsApp. Contact support for help.”

If you feel that there was no reason why your account would be banned on the platform, just send an email to the messaging app to further investigate the issue.

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