India, March 21 -- The Union home ministry has asked WhatsApp to introduce additional guardrails to protect against the rising cases of digital arrest, including blocking the device IDs of those involved in such scams so that they don't repeat the offense by creating new accounts.

The home ministry's high-level inter-departmental committee (IDC) constituted to combat the threat of digital arrests has further directed WhatsApp to retain user data of deleted accounts for 180 days, as prescribed under the IT Rules, 2021, to aid in law enforcement investigations, The Indian Express reported, citing sources.

The Meta-owned messaging platform has agreed to implement these measures. WhatsApp will also introduce new safety features similar to t...