WhatsApp users beware! Survey shows 95% users get spam messages daily

Around 95 per cent of Indians are subjected to pesky or unsolicited commercial messages every day on WhatsApp, a survey has found.

Most of these pesky messages are from financial services, real estate, healthcare, and pathology services or these messages are job offers or offers to make additional earnings, according to a report by LocalCircles.

The survey also found that 76 per cent of WhatsApp users who receive these unsolicited corporate communications say that they see such messages on WhatsApp based on their conversations with WhatsApp business accounts and Facebook & Instagram activities.

LocalCircles surveyed over 51,000 users across 351 districts. Around 56 per cent of respondents were from below tier-2 cities and 39 per cent were women.

In the survey, the platform also said, “LocalCircles will escalate the findings of this survey to relevant stakeholders like MeitY and others to intervene and work with WhatsApp so the unsolicited commercial communication on the platform can be reduced.”

The survey also found that WhatsApp users saw an uptick in these annoying messages since 2021 and it has only risen through 2022.

Following the rise in such messages, LocalCircle said that in 2022, “the issue was escalated to the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) while including Trai in the correspondence as well”. The incidents were on the rise after WhatsApp revised its privacy policy in May 2021, the survey concludes.

In May 2021, WhatsApp updated its privacy policy where it got users to accept that as a condition to using WhatsApp, if they chat with a WhatsApp business account, WhatsApp reserves the right to present advertisements to them on other Meta platforms like Facebook, based on the content of their chat with WhatsApp business accounts.

The Competition Commission of India launched a probe into the instant messaging platform's privacy policy. The probe was challenged by WhatsApp and its parent company Meta platforms but the Supreme Court has quashed the appeal and the CCI is conducting the probe.

Read: Meta Layoffs: Company quashes reports of further job cuts, restructuring

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