WhatsApp banned over 23.87 lakh accounts in July

Social messaging platform WhatsApp banned more than 23.87 lakh accounts in India during July. "Between July 1, 2022, and July 31, 2022, 23,87,000 WhatsApp accounts were banned. 14,16,000 of these accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from users," a monthly report shared by the meta-owned platform stated.

WhatsApp India publishes the report under Rule 4(1)(d) of the Indian Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

In July, WhatsApp received 574 grievance reports from India, and the platform took action on 27 of them.

Out of the 574 grievance reports received in July, 392 reports were for 'ban appeal', and the others were under categories like account, product, other support and safety.

"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. We are particularly focused on prevention because we believe it is much better to stop harmful activity from happening in the first place than to detect it after harm has occurred," the company said.

Earlier in June, WhatsApp had received 632 grievance reports, and the messaging platform took action on 64 of them.

The messaging platform had banned more than 22 lakh accounts in June and; 19 lakh accounts in May.