New Delhi, Dec. 16 -- The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Monday clarified that the privacy and consent safeguards it upheld in a November verdict apply to WhatsApp's sharing of user data with its parent company Meta for all purposes, including advertising. The tribunal noted that its November order did not intend to exclude advertising from the transparency and consent obligations, and reading it otherwise "defeats the central objective of restoring user choice and preventing exploitation under WhatsApp's 2021 privacy policy". "Once users are provided optionality at any stage to opt in or opt out of data sharing - whether using regular features or optional features - their rights are protected for all times and there is a removal of exploitation, which has been the issue in 2021 WhatsApp policy," NCLAT bench of Justice Ashok Bhushan and technical member Arun Baroka said. In November 2024, the Competition Commission of India's CCI imposed a penalty of Rs 213.14 crore on Meta with respect to the WhatsApp privacy policy update done in 2021. Meta Platforms and WhatsApp challenged this order before the NCLAT. Last month , NCLAT upheld the CCI findings that WhatsApp's 2021 privacy policy imposed unfair and exploitative terms on users by compelling them to share data with Meta companies. It also upheld the penalty imposed by CCI. However, the tribunal struck down a part of the CCI's order that imposed a blanket five-year prohibition on WhatsApp using user data for advertising, reasoning that once WhatsApp offers users a genuine opt-in and opt-out choice, a time-bound ban becomes unnecessary. CCI had then filed an application seeking clarity, arguing that the operative portion of the tribunal's judgment did not expressly extend the safeguards to advertising-related data flows....