WhatsApp banned 37 lakh Indian accounts in November: User safety report – Times of India

WhatsApp has released its ‘User Safety Report‘ for the month of November wherein the company has claimed that the instant messaging app banned 37,16,000 WhatsApp accounts in India. The Meta-owned company says that out of these 37 lakh accounts, 990,000 were proactively banned, before any reports from users.
The latest report mentions that the data published is from November 1, 2022 to November 30, 2022. An Indian account is identified via a +91 phone number. WhatsApp releases the monthly report in compliance with the IT Rules, 2021.
“In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we’ve published our report for the month of November 2022. This user-safety report contains details of the user complaints received and the corresponding action taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp’s own preventive actions to combat abuse on our platform. As captured in the latest Monthly Report, WhatsApp banned over 3.7 million accounts in the month of November,” the spokesperson added.

946 reports received
The messaging platform received 946 complaint reports in the month of November in India. It acted upon 74 of those accounts.
How WhatsApp tackles abuse
WhatsApp explains that ‘Accounts Actioned‘ denotes reports where the company took remedial action. By taking action, WhatsApp means that the accounts were either banned or a previously banned account was restored as a result of the complaint. It also says that some reports may have been reviewed but not included as ‘Actioned’.
Last month, WhatsApp banned over 23 lakh accounts in India. It received 701 reports in October and acted upon 34 of them.
“WhatsApp is an industry leader in preventing abuse, among end-to-end encrypted messaging services. Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state of the art technology, data scientists and experts, and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in a statement.