WhatsApp bans over 20 lakh Indian accounts

New Delhi : In a bid to prevent online abuse and keep users safe, WhatApp banned more than 20 lakh accounts in India between May 15 and June 15, said Facebook-owned Company on Thursday.

The report, mandated with the country's new Information Technology Rules, provides a list of actions taken by social media platforms like WhatsApp and Twitter to prevent users from fake news.

"We consistently invest in technology, people and processes to keep our users safe and secure... Our top focus is preventing accounts from sending harmful or unwanted messages at scale. We maintain advanced capabilities to identify these accounts sending a high or abnormal rate of messages and banned 2 million accounts in India alone from May 15 - June 15 attempting this kind of abuse," WhatsApp said.

"WhatsApp [...] 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 added.

"The abuse detection operates at three stages of an account's lifestyle: at registration; during messaging; and in response to negative feedback, which we receive in the form of user reports and blocks. A team of analysts augments these systems to evaluate edge cases and help improve our effectiveness over time," the company said.

WhatsApp has a total user base of around 40 crore people in India.