New Delhi: The Supreme Court has been told that a mobile number gets deactivated only after 90 days upon a request by a subscriber or due to non-usage, and WhatsApp removes the old data if the account of a mobile number is activated on a different device after not being active for 45 days.
A bench comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna and S V N Bhatti said it is from the counter affidavit filed by respondent no. 2, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), that the cellular mobile telephone number once deactivated for non-usage or disconnected on the request of a subscriber, is not allocated to the new subscriber for at least a period of 90 days. TRAI’s affidavit was filed through advocate Sandeep Kapur.
“It is for the earlier subscriber to take adequate steps to ensure that privacy is maintained. The subscriber can prevent misuse of WhatsApp data by deleting the WhatsApp account attached with the previous phone number and erasing the WhatsApp data stored on the local device memory/cloud/drive”, said the bench, in an order passed on October 30.
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The apex court noted that as per the information available on the WhatsApp help centre, to eliminate enmesh/ confusion in case of re-cycled phone numbers, they monitor account inactivity, and when an account is inactive for 45 days and then the account is activated on a different mobile device, the old account data is removed.
Considering these aspects, the apex court dismissed a writ petition filed by Rajeswari, an advocate from Tamil Nadu. The petitioner had questioned the misuse of WhatsApp data after a particular number got deactivated due to non- sage. She requested the apex court to issue a direction to the TRAI to stop recycling used or deactivating mobile numbers to new customers.
TRAI had contended before the apex court that most of the public and private systems in India used mobile numbers as a means for identifying the customers and also to authenticate and authorise various services via One-Time Password (OTP) sent on their respective mobile numbers.
A mobile number, when surrendered or permanently disconnected, can be re-allocated to a new customer after the completion of 90 days of non-usage, as per instructions of the Department of Telecommunications.
