Every month, millions of Indian mobile phone accounts disappear from the WhatsApp, a phenomenon that is backed up by large-scale, globally rare-scale blocking operations against garbage messages, fraud and policy violations. As the largest market for the WhatsApp, India is also the country with the highest monthly number closures. According to whatsApp ‘ s compliance report under the 2021 IT Rules, as of October this year, an average of almost 10 million Indian accounts per month had been blocked, and approximately 9.87 million accounts had been blocked in June 2025 alone, of which 1.97 million had been voluntarily blocked without any user complaints.
The large numbering data itself has drawn the attention of government officials responsible for combating cyber-fraud, which, in their view, is not only the result of regular content audits, but also reveals that Indian mobile phone numbers are being misused by “industrial scale” in areas such as fraud, identity fraud and financial fraud. These activities usually operate across borders using low-cost telecommunication ecology and easy digital account registration processes in India. Indian officials described a common pattern: the use of Indian mobile phone numbers by outlaws to open accounts on platforms such as WhitsApp and Telegram, making it difficult to track them after initial setting, as the platform accounts were activated without the need for physical SIM cards. Even if one number is blocked by the Whatsapp, the operator can move quickly to another platform and continue to operate as a new digital identity. This “spoiling rat”-like situation makes law enforcement particularly complex, especially in response to digital scams, false identity groups and coordinated fishing attacks. The Government of India estimates that due to the very high prevalence of the WhatsApp, most of the recent reported cases of digital extortion and identity impersonation involve a link in the criminal chain of the platform. To that end, the Government has initiated discussions on the platform to obtain a full picture of the problem and to explore enhanced protective measures to prevent the “weaponization” of Indian mobile phones on a large scale.
However, the focus of the controversy is on transparency and accountability. Despite the monthly reports issued by the WhatsApp, officials noted that these disclosures fell far short of regulatory requirements. The report does not indicate whether the ban is based on complaints from users, automatic testing or government requests, nor does it clarify how many sealed numbers have undergone a real-name authentication process at the telecommunications level. “The specific basis of the ban is not clear,” one official said, “We are not asking for personal privacy, but need information sufficient to judge whether a number belongs to a large fraud network”. The lack of such data granularity is considered to undermine the original intent of the Indian IT compliance framework to balance user privacy with the Platform ‘ s responsibility. Without clearer information, it would be difficult to assess whether Platform law enforcement actually deterred fraud or simply diverted the problem. User-end data also reveal large gaps. In June 2025, the WhatsApp received 23596 complaints from users in India via official channels such as mail, but only 1001 (less than 5 per cent) initiated disposal measures, more than 16,000 appeals against the closure of accounts, of which only 756 were processed; 350 security-related reports were not directly responded to and users were directed to the application process, which lacked accountability and was not always followed up.
WhatsApp argued that its enforcement was based on behavioural signals and advanced detection systems rather than on obtaining information. As a result of end-to-end encryption, the Platform believes that there are significant technical and legal challenges in sharing account-level details. The former Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology officials in India, for their part, pointed out that the core of the debate was not the weakening of encryption but the attribution of responsibility under large-scale operations. If compliance reporting is aimed at building public confidence, selective and non-transparent will erode confidence. Concerns about the arbitrariness of law enforcement and the lack of an external audit of the system persist with the closure of nearly millions of accounts within a month, with little disclosure of details of the nature of the violations and of information on user channels.