NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Tuesday warned popular messaging platform WhatsApp of a complete ban for sharing personal data of users, as it tore into the Mark Zuckerberg-controlled behemoth for exploiting and commercialising the data in violation of privacy rights and dismissing its defence of taking users’ consent as a sham deal where the latter had no cards.Dealing with appeals by WhatsApp, its parent company Meta which also owns Facebook, challenging a NCLAT decision that upheld Competition Commissions finding of abuse of dominant position against the social media giant, a bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi scorched it with admonitions for violating right to privacy of Indian citizens.“You have complete monopoly in the sector. The consent to share agreement is like the agreement between the lion and the lamb — either you give consent to share your personal data or you walk out of the WhatsApp service,” said the bench.“We will not allow you to share a single word of the personal data you gather from messages. Otherwise, we will dismiss the appeals,” the CJI warned repeatedly.WhatsApp and Meta through senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Amit Sibal sought to argue that the data is shared after obtaining consent from the users and that the messages are encrypted in such a manner that these cannot be accessed by WhatsApp.SC posted the matter for hearing in the WhatsApp case on Feb 9 and asked the ministry of electronics and information technology to also file its response.The hearing was peppered with pithy critical observations from the bench, which said, “There is no question of sharing data.
Author: Dhananjay Mahapatra
Published at: 2026-02-03 22:51:47
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