Phone number gets deactivated after 90 days due to non-usage, WhatsApp cleans data after 45 days, SC told

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.

WhatsApp, on other hand, removes the old data, if the account of a mobile number is activated on a different device after being de-active for 45 days.

Having noted these points, a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and S V N Bhatti declined to consider a writ petition filed by Rajeswari, an advocate from Tamil Nadu.

The petitioner questioned the misuse of WhatsApp data after a particular number got deactivated due to non-usage. She sought a direction to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to stop recycling of used (old) or de-activated mobile numbers to new customers.

The court, however, considered an affidavit by the TRAI, through advocate Sandeep Kapur.

"It is clear from the counter affidavit filed by TRAI that the cellular mobile telephone number once deactivated for non usage or disconnected on the request of subscriber, is not allocated to the new subscriber for at least a period of 90 days," the bench said.

The telecom regulator said 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," it noted.

"Further, as per the information available on the WhatsApp help center, 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," the bench noted the submission.

The TRAI also stated as most of the public and private systems in India use mobile numbers as a means for identifying the customers and also to authenticate and authorise various services via One-Time Password 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. 

The reallocation of deactivated mobile number is an activity carried out by the Telecom Service Providers as per instructions issued by the Department of Telecommunications on April 13 and April 20, 2017.

However, a number of service delivery platforms/systems are not updated by the earlier customer, who may either not be using the service regularly and resultantly don't find a reason to update their mobile number, or due to lack of awareness of potential danger due to mobile number re-use, thereby creating possibility of an identity/profile takeover on re-allocation of a mobile number, it pointed out.

So, MNRL (Mobile Number Revocation List), published on monthly basis, is made available to stakeholders in order to maintain transparency and efficiency and to enable the interested parties to clean up their databases, thereby not sending OTPs to someone other than their customer, the regulator added.