New Delhi, Dec. 15 -- The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Monday clarified that WhatsApp must take user consent before sharing data for both advertising and non-advertising purposes.

A bench led by NCLAT chairperson Justice Ashok Bhushan allowed the Competition Commission of India's (CCI) plea seeking clarity on the scope of the tribunal's 4 November ruling. The tribunal made it clear that user consent is mandatory for all the data that WhatsApp collects and shares with it parent company Meta, not just the data used for advertising.

Earlier, the NCLAT had upheld the CCI's finding that WhatsApp's 2021 privacy policy relied on coerced consent, forcing users to accept data sharing or lose access to the service. However, ...