About 4.7 million WhatsApp accounts were banned in the month of March and 1.7 million of those accounts were proactively banned before any reports from users’ side, the instant messaging platform said in its monthly report. In February, it banned about 4.6 million Indian accounts.
An Indian account is identified via a +91 phone number. “Between 1 Mar, 2023 and 31 Mar 2023, 4,715,906 WhatsApp accounts were banned. 1,659,385 of these accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from users,” the report titled India Monthly Report under the Information Technology said on Monday.
In addition to responding to and taking action 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,” it said.
The abuse detection operates at three stages — at registration, during messaging, and in response to negative feedback which it receives in the form of user reports and blocks.