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In a bid to trace the first originator of a message, Indian Government has suggested WhatsApp to assign Alpha Numeric Hash to each messages.

The Indian Government has recently introduced the Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics code which is also known as Information Technology Rules 2021. As per the same rule, the Government has mandated all the Digital websites and apps operating in India to trace the first originator of a message flagged by a court of law or an authorised Government agency.

WhatsApp as per a statista report has more than five hundred million active users in India so far hasn’t complied with India’s Information Technology Rules 2021.

Earlier when the Indian government asked WhatsApp to trace the first originator of a flagged message, the company said they aren’t able to do so because they haven’t developed any technology yet that can trace the first originator of a message without breaking the end-to-end encryption of the app. In fact, WhatsApp has cleared that they will not break their app’s end-to-end encryption feature because that will violate their policy and they might lose the faith of its users.

India Proposes Alhpa Numeric Hash for WhatsApp

Seeing the same, the Government of India has now come up with a new idea of assigning an alpha numeric hash to every message sent on whatsapp. A government official has said by assigning the alpha numeric hash to every message the end-to-end encryption will remain intact while tracing any suspicious message.

The same government official also said that the Indian Government has proposed to collaborate with WhatsApp in order to implement the alpha numeric hash feature with every message of WhatsApp.

WhatsApp so far hasn’t commented about the same. Let see what the company plans about the proposal received by the Government of India.


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