Budget 2018-19

  Requiring messaging apps to trace chats is asking us to keep a fingerprint of every single message: Company. WhatsApp on Tuesday filed a legal challenge against the Indian government, protesting before the Delhi High Court new IT rules that would require messaging services to trace the origin of particular messages. “Requiring messaging apps to “trace” chats is the equivalent of asking us to keep a fingerprint of every single message sent on  WhatsApp , which would break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermines people’s right to privacy,” said a WhatsApp spokesperson. “We have consistently joined civil society and experts around the world in opposing requirements that would violate the privacy of our users. In the meantime, we will also continue to engage with the Government of India on practical solutions aimed at keeping people safe, including responding to valid legal requests for the information available to us,” said the spokesperson. Under the recently notifi...

  Delhi High Court sought response of CCI on the appeals of Facebook and WhatsApp against a single judge order dismissing their pleas against a probe ordered into messaging app’s new privacy policy The Delhi High Court on Thursday sought response of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) on the appeals of Facebook and WhatsApp against a single judge order dismissing their pleas against a probe ordered into the messaging app’s new privacy policy. A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jasmeet Singh issued notice to the CCI that had ordered the probe and sought its response by May 21, the next date of hearing. The single judge on April 22 had said though it would have been “prudent” for the CCI to await the outcome of petitions in the Supreme Court and the Delhi HC against  WhatsApp’s  new privacy policy, but not doing so would not make the regulator’s order “perverse” or “wanting of jurisdiction”.

  In a quarterly earnings call with analysts on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said that the company has moved the date of this update back to give everyone time to understand what the update means. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has defended the upcoming WhatsApp privacy policy that has witnessed a massive backlash in India, saying that the update does not change the privacy of anyone’s messages with friends and family. The WhatsApp policy has now been put on hold till May 15. It aims to share commercial user data with parent Facebook. The Indian government has also written a letter to WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart to withdraw the policy. In a quarterly earnings call with analysts on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said that the company has moved the date of this update back to give everyone time to understand what the update means. “All of these messages are end-to-end encrypted, which means we can’t see or hear what you say and we never will, unless the person that you message chooses to share it and b...

  Maximum 20 million user base initially; NPCI puts 30 per cent cap on third party apps’ share of UPI transactions The National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), which manages Unified Payment Interface (UPI), has decided to allow Facebook backed messaging service WhatsApp to go live on UPI in the multi-bank model. WhatsApp can expand its UPI user base in a graded manner starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 million in UPI, NPCI said in a statement today. Though the condition of 20 million will be a dampener, it is some relief for WhatsApp, which began its pilot run two years ago, while it awaited regulatory clearances to launch its UPI-based payments for its 400 million users in India. In August, NPCI had informed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that  WhatsApp  had met data localisation requirements. In a related development, NPCI has capped the share of total number of transaction that a third party application can process at 30 per cent of total volume o...

Recently, Facebook come under scrutiny after reports emerged that the data analytics company Cambridge Analytica accessed the company's user data for over 50 million accounts without their permission The Mark Zuckerberg-led social media company Facebook in 2014 acquired instant messaging app WhatsApp, which had been co-founded in 2009 by former Yahoo employee Jan Koum and Brian Acton. While Koum continues to lead the messaging platform, Acton has since left the company and started his own venture, Signal. Now, Brian Acton, the estranged co-founder of WhatsApp, seems to have turned against Facebook. In a Tweet that might raise many questions, Acton wrote, “It is time”, with a hashtag, to "#deletefacebook".  The Mark Zuckerberg-led social media company Facebook in 2014 acquired instant messaging app WhatsApp, which had been co-founded in 2009 by former Yahoo employee Jan Koum and Brian Acton. While Koum continues to lead the messaging platform, Acton has...