‘Won’t allow you to violate citizens’ privacy rights’: Supreme Court comes down on WhatsApp
Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, was sharply criticised by the Supreme Court on Tuesday over the messaging platform’s 2021 privacy policy.
A bench led by Chief Justice Surya reprimanded the US-based company, warning, “You can’t play with privacy… we will not allow you to share a single digit of our data”, and said the court would not tolerate the exploitation of Indian users.
The hearing concerned challenges to a Competition Commission of India (CCI) order that imposed a Rs 213 crore penalty on WhatsApp for its privacy policy.
The company law tribunal had upheld the fine but allowed WhatsApp to resume sharing user data for advertising, ruling there was no ‘abuse of power’. The CCI has filed a cross-appeal against that finding.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the government, termed the policy “exploitative” for enabling commercial use of user data.
Responding strongly, the Chief Justice said, “If you can’t follow our Constitution, leave India. We won’t allow citizens’ privacy to be compromised.”
The court questioned whether the policy could be understood by ordinary users, asking, “… a poor woman or a roadside vendor, or someone who only speaks Tamil… will they be able to understand?” It added, “Sometimes even we have difficulty understanding your policies…”, and remarked, “… so how will people living in rural Bihar understand them? This is a way of committing theft of private information. We won’t allow it.”
Illustrating the concern, the Chief Justice said, “If a message is sent to a doctor on WhatsApp… that you are feeling under the weather… and the doctor sends some medicine prescriptions, immediately you start seeing ads…”
Senior Advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Akhil Sibal, appearing for Meta and WhatsApp, argued that messages are end-to-end encrypted and inaccessible even to the companies.
In November 2024, the CCI ruled that WhatsApp had forced users to accept the policy due to its dominant market position.
While the Rs 213 crore penalty remains, Meta and WhatsApp have challenged the order, after the tribunal lifted a five-year restriction on data sharing in November 2025.
