WhatsApp has banned more than 18 lakh accounts in India within 24 hours of the start of the new year, according to an India Today report citing sources. It was found that many users were misusing the messaging platform by sending abusive messages, pornography, rumours and more through the app, breaching its terms and conditions. The Facebook-owned company will use technology to detect accounts violating its terms and automatically ban them from being used in future, according to the report. WhatsApp had earlier told India Today that it cannot comment on individual accounts or provide information about these numbers as it does not have access to such information. Whatsapp Bans 18.58 lakh Indian Accounts
Global List
WhatsApp has started blocking accounts to prevent spammers from signing up for an account with fake information and sending spam messages, fake news and soliciting users with ads on their status or group chats. WhatsApp announced that about 1 percent of its 1.3 billion monthly active users worldwide are caught abusing WhatsApp by registering multiple accounts with a mobile number, or related numbers that aren’t theirs to send out bulk messages, etc.
Top 10 Countries
India ranks first with 8,22,089 users followed by Indonesia and Mexico with 6,06,420 and 5,55,530 respectively. India has a 31% share of all banned accounts globally
Within India
WhatsApp has banned nearly 19 lakh accounts in India for spam and bulk messaging over a period of one month. The Facebook-owned app said it was using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to prevent spam on its platform, keeping out undesirable content from groups and individual users who don’t want to receive unsolicited information or messages from unknown contacts.
Demographics of Users Banned
According to data released by Facebook, where Whatsapp is a subsidiary, it has banned close to 19 lakh accounts across India within one month period between January 1 and February 15 due to fake user information or users who tried logging in with multiple phone numbers. We were notified about an attack on our systems that attempted to gain unauthorized access to WhatsApp accounts (possibly including yours). Our security team has been looking at our logs for evidence of these sophisticated attacks.