Delhi High Court dismisses appeals filed by WhatsApp, Facebook against CCI's probe into its privacy policy

Delhi High Court dismisses appeals filed by WhatsApp, Facebook against CCI's probe into its privacy policy

In the previous hearing, Meta submitted that mere ownership cannot be reason for CCI to involve it in its investigation in connection with WhatsApp's privacy policy.

On the grounds of lack of merit, the Delhi High Court on Thursday dismissed the appeals filed by WhatsApp and its parent company Meta (formerly Facebook) against the order of a single bench which declined to interfere with CCI's investigation into the Company's 2021 privacy policy.

The order was passed today after it was reserved on July 25.

The single judge bench of Justice Navin Chawla last year dismissed the pleas by WhatsApp and Meta finding no merit and refused to quash CCI's order. The Competition Commission of India had ordered a probe into the new privacy policy of WhatsApp after making a prima facie observation that it was violative of the Competition Act 2000.

During the previous course of hearings, Whatsapp had undertaken to not enforce its privacy policy till the time the Data Protection Bill comes out. Salve had assured the Court that the company will conform to the parliamentary law.

Issuing notices to both WhatsApp and its parent company, CCI had observed that the privacy policy terms on sharing of personalised data with Facebook companies was "neither fully transparent nor based on specific, voluntary consent of users".

The CCI had made a prima facie observation that the policy was an abuse of dominant position resulting in violation of Section 4 of the Competition Act.

The privacy policy was termed as "take-it-or-leave-it' terms set by a dominant messaging platform, without providing much information to be users resulting it to unfair and unreasonable.

The CCI bench comprising Ashok Kumar Gupta (Chairperson), Sangeeta Verma (Member) and Bhagwant Singh Bishnoi (Member) observed that "a thorough and detailed investigation is required to ascertain the full extent, scope and impact of data sharing through involuntary consent of users".

Thus, the Commission directed the Director General ('DG') to cause an investigation to be made into the matter under the provisions of Section 26(1) of the Act. The DG is required to to complete the investigation and submit the investigation report within a period of 60 days from the receipt of this order.