The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has told the Supreme Court that a mobile number deactivated due to disuse or disconnected on the subscriber’s request is not allocated to a new subscriber for 90 days. A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and S V N Bhatti was hearing a plea, by a lawyer from Tamil Nadu, which flagged the potential for misuse of WhatsApp data after the number using it is deactivated due to disuse. The petition urged the court to direct TRAI to stop recycling old or deactivated mobile numbers. TRAI told the court that a user can prevent misuse of WhatsApp data by deleting the WhatsApp account linked to the phone number that the subscriber is giving up. The bench noted that the previous subscriber of the number has to do due diligence to ensure their privacy is not breached, and disposed of the petition.
