Last week, Delhi High Court ordered WhatsApp India to delete any data collected from users who refuse to join in the company’s new privacy policy before September 25th. According to Mashable, however, WhatsApp has no plan to comply with the court order…

WhatsApp: sharing users data with Facebook

Since WhatsApp announced that it would be sharing some users data, including phone numbers, contacts, profile pictures with Facebook, the app has come in for some serious criticism for violating consumer privacy in India. Facebook claims that sharing information between the two will help it to improve the experience and fight abuse across both platforms. And WhatsApp defended the change by saying that all messages on the service will remain encrypted. However, many users are totally not impressed.

Under the new changes, Facebook is able to see the phone number that people have associated with their WhatsApp account. That allows the US social network to link and track profiles between the two services, helping Facebook gather more data for its advertisements.  Two students approached the Delhi High Court, claimed that such new terms of service will jeopardize the privacy and compromise the rights of over 100 million active WhatsApp India users in their country.

This isn’t the first time that WhatsApp has faced resistance from governments. Not long before, Germany had also asked WhatsApp to stop collecting user data; as well as to delete everything that they have since collected. Unsurprisingly, WhatsApp has also refused to comply with their requests.

WhatsApp: objections from users

A representative from WhatsApp India said that this rule had no impact on the planned policy and terms of service updates. It is clear that many aren’t fond of the new policy changes, especially since several years ago when Facebook acquired WhatsApp, both companies made a promise that they will not share data with each other, but obviously, they didn’t keep their promise.