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WhatsApp Privacy Policy Updates: Concerns over Data Privacy

With the start of 2021, WhatsApp started rolling out notifications to its users for the updated terms and conditions.

 
 
 
 

Social media giant, WhatsApp has updated its privacy policy alerting the users to agree to the new terms on or before February 8, 2021 to continue using the app.

 

Founded back in 2008, and gained popularity drastically in 2016, WhatsApp has seen wide acceptance among users when it pushed its end-to-end encryption feature for its users. The company saw a sudden surge in its popularity, when they updated the privacy policy with the start of 2021 to increase business chats for small and big businesses.

 
WhatsApp is one of the widely used user-friendly platform for exchanging messages and files in the form of audio, video or documents over the internet. The Facebook-owned company, WhatsApp has updated its Privacy policy allowing other Facebook owned companies to access WhatsApp data.

 

The New Privacy Policy

Let’s see what exactly is there in the WhatsApp new privacy policy and why people are running to alternatives of WhatsApp.

 
The whole story revolves over secured data communication and data privacy. The new privacy policy applicable from February 8, 2021 will allow WhatsApp and Facebook to share their user’s information with third-party service providers and businesses. The major concern over the new WhatsApp privacy policy is that the user’s information like their phone number, IP address, mobile device information, contacts etc. will be shared with parent Facebook.

 
Sparked by concerns over their data privacy, people started flooding Twitter with variety of views. People started giving suggestions to WhatsApp users to switch to alternative messaging apps for increased security. The second most popular messaging app Telegram and a new entrant Signal (which has been endorsed by Elon Musk) also became active as these offer some impressive security features.

 
When people started showing concern for data privacy, the world’s richest man, co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI on January 7, 2021 just tweeted two words
“Use Signal”.

 
Five hours later, the app’s official Twitter handle reported delays in delivery of verification codes as several users started signing up.

 
Update as on January 17, 2021
Amid lot of criticism for WhatsApp on data privacy and experiencing shift in its user base, WhatsApp reacted few days later. To convince its existing users, WhatsApp posted its status visible to all users on 17th January, 2021. The status story consisted of the following points:

  • WhatsApp doesn’t share your contacts with Facebook.
  • WhatsApp can’t read or listen to your personal conversations as they’re end-to-end encrypted.
  • WhatsApp can’t see your shared location.
  • We are committed to your privacy.

Let’s wait and watch what happens next.

One Response to “WhatsApp Privacy Policy Updates: Concerns over Data Privacy”

  1. Prajal says:

    What a timely information. I was searching something like this over internet.

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