A day after WhatsApp filed a legal complaint in Delhi High Court against the Government of India's new IT rules seeking to implement traceability of certain messages, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today said that the government fully recognizes and respects the right of privacy.

In a statement, he added that ordinary users of WhatsApp have nothing to fear about the new rules. The Minister confirmed that the objective of the new rules is to find out who started the message that led to the commissioning of specific crimes as mentioned in the rules.

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The Minister assured that the new rules will prevent abuse and misuse of social media, and that they empower the ordinary users of social media when they become victims of abuse.

There is a fear that WhatsApp will have it end its end-to-end encryption feature if the new rules are implemented.

Meanwhile, there are concerns about privacy over Facebook complying with the rules in the future. RTI activist Srinivas Kodali wrote, "Forget WhatsApp, Google complying with intermediary rules is a problem. They have way more data on you and track every click, action you do on your phone."