The new privacy policy of WhatsApp would lead to excessive data collection and “stalking” of consumers for targeted advertising to bring in more users and is therefore, an alleged abuse of dominant position, competition regulator CCI told the Delhi High Court on Tuesday.
The submission was made before Justice Navin Chawla by senior advocate Aman Lekhi on behalf of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in defence of its order directing an investigation into the new privacy policy of messaging platform WhatsApp.
The CCI was looking into the competition aspect and not the alleged violation of individuals’ privacy which was being looked into by the Supreme Court, Lekhi said.
“There is no question of jurisdictional error,” he said and added that WhatsApp and Facebook’s pleas challenging the CCI’s decision were “incompetent and misconceived”.