WhatsApp is currently with over 2 billion users one of the biggest text messaging providers in the world. It was founded in 2009 and purchased in 2014 by Facebook. As already published, the US Federal Trade Commission is currently taking action against Facebook due to illegal monopolization.
When WhatsApp was purchased back in 2014 for $ 19 billion by Facebook, they announced and assured users that their data will remain private and will not be shared with Facebook. Suddenly, in 2016 WhatsApp started sharing data with Facebook but most important, the users could opt out of the data sharing and adjust in the settings to not share their account information with Facebook.
Today, on my phone popped up an in-app notification saying that WhatsApp is updating its terms and privacy policy, which comes 8th of February 2021. Furthermore the notification contains:
Key updates include more information about
- WhatsApp’s service and how we process your data.
- How businesses can use Facebook hosted services to store and manage their WhatsApp chats.
- How we partner with Facebook to offer integrations across the Facebook Company Products.
The new introduced privacy policy, on the other hand, will not give users the choice to renounce from the data sharing and WhatsApp will soon share their data with Facebook and its affiliates including user phone numbers, other phone numbers stored in contact lists, profile names and pictures and other diagnostic data. In some countries, even financial transactions made through the app because the application features sending and receiving money via WhatsApp.
Facebook will use the received information e.g., for friend recommendations, personalized content and personalized advertisement on different Facebook products. It is important to mention, that WhatsApp is using end-to-end encryption for messages, so texts, videos and other media will remain private and will not be a part of the shared data with Facebook.
Users will have no other choice than to accept the new privacy policy update. If users disagree with this change, WhatsApp suggests them to delete their account. A later update though is stating that due to stronger privacy legislation, the new privacy policy will not apply in the European Union.
After dealing with the topic, I guess WhatsApp will lose some users because data protection is a very sensitive topic for a lot of them and they will switch to alternatives like Signal, Threema or Wire.
Sources:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/whatsapp-users-must-share-their-data-with-facebook-or-stop-using-the-app/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/06/whatsapp-share-your-data-with-facebook/
https://uk.pcmag.com/mobile-apps/130826/whatsapp-to-require-users-to-share-data-with-facebook-via-new-privacy-policy
Ah that is sad, so many people were only depending on whatsapp, because they did not want anything distracting them like on facebook. I agree, some users will surely switch, because of that loony idea.