Indian Students Score a Partial Win in Facebook Privacy Dispute. Two Indian students have in India achieved what many have tried and failed in the United States of America. Two students scored a partial victory over Facebook in a closely watched legal battle over privacy.

Readers may remember that Facebook-owned WhatsApp had revised its privacy policy last month. The new policy allows WhatsApp to share its users’ data with owner Facebook. The data will allow Facebook to target ads and messages from businesses, laying the groundwork for the free messaging service to begin making money. Students Karmanya Singh Sareen and Shreya Sethi, 19 and 22 respectively, then filed a public-interest litigation — akin to a class action — seeking to block those changes. They wanted a rollback of those updates, in a lawsuit that’s attracted attention as a test case for how legal authorities around the world may respond.

Students Karmanya Singh Sareen, 19 and Shreya Sethi, 22 filed a public-interest litigation in India to block WhatsApp from sharing user data with its parent. Public-interest litigation or PIL as it’s popularly called is equivalent to a Class Action Suit filed in the US. In the PIL the two students had asked the Judge to order a complete rollback of those updates. During the hearing, lawyers appearing for WhatsApp said it doesn’t intend to share content with Facebook except user names and phone numbers.

Though the two students could fully get what they wanted, the Delhi High Court on Friday ruled that WhatsApp has to delete all data on users who choose to stop using the service before Sept. 25, when the new policy takes effect. The judge also ruled that WhatsApp may share only that data which is collected after 25th September 2016.

However, going forward, WhatsApp is free to share information on users who haven’t opted out. The court also asked India’s government to consider if it was feasible to craft regulations to oversee WhatsApp and other messaging apps, though it didn’t specify what form they could take.

http://www.042tech.com/2016/09/two-indian-students-win-partial-victory-over-facebook-whatsapp-data-privacy.html