“WhatsApp respects and protects your privacy”. This is the official statement provided by WhatsApp since Facebook, Inc. acquired it. WhatsApp Privacy Policy assured this by providing end-to-end encryption for both Personal and Business accounts There are around 2 billion WhatsApp users around the world. All users, other than European users, were notified about the change in Privacy Policy. Everyone are more interested to understand how this would affect their daily usage.
The online world is with daunting data leaks, privacy infringement and conspiracy theories. Many of these find us without our knowledge, while some with our full acceptance. The whatsapp latest privacy policy falls into the latter. Or does it? Let’s have a closer look at it to understand this development. The official Terms of Service and Privacy Policy of WhatsApp are available here.
What are the changes in WhatsApp Privacy Policy 2021?
The following are the list of all changes in the new policy:
- Account information
- Messages (including undelivered messages, media forwarding)
- Connections
- Status information
- Transactions and payments data
- Usage and log information
- Device and connection information
- Location information
- Cookies
Business Messages
WhatsApp Business is an app for Business owners. They send messages to their customers who have WhatsApp installed. Here “Business Messages” refers to the messages between the Business and the normal user.
The Business messages are different from personal messages. Whether you communicate with a business by phone, email, or WhatsApp, it can see what you’re saying and may use that information for its own marketing purposes, which may include advertising on Facebook.
If you choose to interact with Shops, your shopping activity can be used to personalize your Shops experience and the ads you see on Facebook and Instagram. Features like this are optional and when you use them WhatsApp will tell you in the app how your data is being shared with Facebook.
You may see an ad on Facebook with a button to message a business using WhatsApp. If you have WhatsApp installed on your phone, you’ll have the option to message that business. Facebook may use the way you interact with these ads to personalize the ads you see on Facebook.
Language
In the upcoming WhatsApp privacy policy change, language regarding data sharing with Facebook was changed, leading many to believe the new mandated data sharing was a new change that could not be avoided — even though it’s been happening all along.
Why is the new WhatsApp Privacy Policy not applicable for European countries?
The data sharing to a point, seems to be common to every continent except for the European continent where the users have greater control. This is mainly due to the unions policy that varies drastly from rest of the world. Infact, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the strictest in the world that ensures the consumers full rights on their data with the assurance of data usage and deletion.
According to the software companies policy for EU, the consumers have the right to access, rectify, port, and erase their information, as well as the right to restrict and object to certain processing of their information.
Their policy in the EU talks about data sharing with Facebook wherein the consumer are provided with a special setting called “Managing and Retaining Information”, with which they can change, update or erase information that the platform controls. This option is unique to them and is not available elsewhere. Infact, the customers in the EU can even withdraw their consent to WhatsApp for processing of data, thanks to the strict policy mandated by GDPR.
The matter which mostly intrests us comes from the fact that the messaging gaint had informed the EU on its inability to combine Whatsapp data with its other services. This statement was provided when the autorities in 2017 fined Facebook 110 million euros for misleading regulators during a 2014 review of the WhatsApp takeover.
How does the new WhatsApp Privacy Policy affect users?
Firstly, if you choose not to accept these policies by 15th May 2021, you will not be able to use WhatsApp any more.
WhatsApp has officially declared that it does not track user location nor other personal parameters and provide it to Facebook. However, they have access to user’s IP address, time zone, area code and phone number. With these information WhatsApp would be able to generalise and estimate the general location of the user.
To further this, they have also stated that a part of the data collected by them would be transferred and shared to countries with the presence of Facebook’s affiliate companies. This data transfer helps achieve their global services.
Group Privacy
WhatsApp Privacy Policy says that “group membership” is used “to deliver messages and to protect their service from spam and abuse”. There is no data sharing with Facebook for ad purposes. Further, the chats on groups are also end-to-end encrypted.
What are the other options for users?
- Tata Group has asked its employees to not use WhatsApp for any business.
- Elon Reeve Musk, CEO of SpaceX, has recommended to use Signal:
Signal
The rise in popularity of Signal attributes to two different reasons:
- A tweet by Elon Musk recommending to use Signal.
- Investors investing in wrong Signal.
Signal is a messaging app that provides high security to its users. It is open source and has end to end encryption alongwith features that one can customise. The non-profit Signal Foundation was launched in February 2018 with initial funding of $50 million from Brian Acton (an American internet entrepreneur).
“Use Signal”, Elon Musk wrote on Twitter on Jan, 7 and many investors, hoping to make quick bucks, invest in Signal Advance Inc. but little did they know that they were investing in the wrong company. This was enough to push Signal Advance’s rally more than 5,100% in three trading days giving it a market valuation of $390 million.
Telegram
Telegram is a messaging app. Users can send text and voice messages, animated stickers, make voice and video calls, and share an unlimited number of images, documents (2 GB per file), user locations, contacts, and music.
Skype
Skype allows registered users to communicate through both instant messaging and voice chat. Skype’s text chat client allows group chats, emoticons, storing chat history, and editing of previous messages. Offline messages were implemented in a beta build of version 5 but removed after a few weeks without notification. The usual features familiar to instant messaging users—user profiles, online status indicators, and so on—are also included.
Always Remember : Nothing is free. If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product.
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