WhatsApp threatens to quit operations in India

New Delhi : With changing rules and regulations in India, social media giant WhatsApp is considering options to withdraw operations from the nation.

With over 200 million users, India is WhatsApp's biggest market in the world. Globally, the platform has over 1.5 billion users.

"Of the proposed regulations, the one which concerns us the most is the emphasis on traceability of messages," Carl Woog, WhatsApp's Head of Communications, told IANS on the sidelines of a media workshop.

WhatsApp currently offers end-to-end encryption by default which means only the sender and receiver can see messages in circulation – not even WhatsApp.

"The proposed changes are going overboard and are not consistent with strong privacy protections that people around the world are seeking," said Woog, who served as the Spokesperson for the Barack Obama administration in the US.

Indian government, however, wants the social media company to make changes for India post several incidents of fake news and poor videos being circulated on the platform.

Without denying the possibility of quitting the India market in case the new regulations come into force, Woog told IANS: "It will not help to speculate what is to come. There is a process in place in India to discuss this issue".

Recently, WhatsApp introduced several new measures including limiting the number of messages that a user can forward to five.