DELHI: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has banned ‘WeTansfer.com’, an online file-sharing website. The DoT has not clarified the reason behind such a ban.
‘WeTransfer’ is a popular file-sharing platform that is trending on the internet. The site allowed the user to transfer up to 2GB of data to any mail address. The users were not required to create any separate account for the use of the site. It has been used globally and there are millions of people using it in India. The website allowed the paid user to share a file that was more than 2GB or with higher capacities. In the period of lockdown, the website started trending amongst the users. However, most of the users were satisfied with the free plan.
The DoT issued notice to ban the website. In the first and the second notice, the department asked to ban the two specific URLs on the website and in the third notice the entire website was blocked.
The government has not given any specific reason for banning the website. It has been estimated in the Lok Sabha session of 2019 that the level of blocked URLs rose to 442%. Most of the file-sharing websites have been blocked due to content sharing. There was no access to the content sharing files on the website. Sometimes, the contents include some porns as well. The URLs consist of malware and can be a threat to national security.
However, no actions have been taken against the users for sharing such files. The file-sharing websites that act as a carrier have been blocked in such cases.