WhatsApp, social media exempted, says govt over encryption policy

New Delhi, Sept 22: Hours after announcing that users will have to store their WhatsApp, SMS and E-mail conversations for upto 90 days under the National Encryption Policy, the Government did a U-turn on Tuesday and has now exempted WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and others from the same.

This comes after the move stirred a controversy over the draft government policy on internet security that wanted all users to save all messages in plain text for upto 90 days and should be able to produce the same if asked by the authorities.

The Department of Electronics and Information Techonology on Tuesday said that social media websites and applications will be exempted.

Experts say that if the draft was to be implemented, it could compromise the privacy of the users and also pose a risk to all net banking and online transcations.

OneIndia News