If you want to keep using WhatsApp, apparently you now have to give permission to it to share your personal data with its parent company Facebook. You will have until early February to decide to agree and accept the revamped privacy policy or to just delete your account and use other messaging apps. It’s quite a major turnaround for a messaging app that says privacy is part and parcel of its DNA and was previously praised for its “state-of-the-art end-to-end encryption”.
The new privacy policy that users have to accept is delivered as an in-app alert, stating that key updates include how they process your data, how businesses can benefit by using Facebook hosted services to store and manage their WhatsApp chats, and how they are partnered with Facebook to offer integrations across all their other products. If you don’t really care about Facebook and just wanted to use WhatsApp for messaging, then this is bad news for you.
Back in 2016, users were given a one-time option to opt out of sharing their data with Facebook, which acquired the messaging app back in 2014. But now it seems that they’re not giving users the choice anymore. Some of the data that you’ll be required to share with Facebook include your phone number, numbers stored in your address book, your profile name and picture, status message including when you were last online, and diagnostic data collected from app logs.
There’s no official word yet from Facebook but according to Ars Technica, a spokeswoman said that this is part of the move to allow businesses to store and manage WhatsApp chats using the infrastructure of its parent company. She said that users have the option of blocking businesses and that there’s no change to how they will share data for non-business chats and account data. It’s all a bit confusing right now as they have not deigned to explain it properly to consumers.
If you’re a WhatsApp user, you have until February 8 to accept the new terms and privacy policy if you want to keep using WhatsApp. Let’s see how many will just jump ship as they do not trust Facebook to properly manage their data.
