WhatsApp clarification about its Privacy Policy Update: Millions of users are now joining WhatsApp rival messaging apps Telegram and Signal

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WhatsApp clarification about its Privacy Policy Update: Millions of users are now joining WhatsApp rival messaging apps Telegram and Signal.   



Rashid Hussain



WhatsApp's new Privacy Policy will come into effect on February 8, 2021 



In the first month of 2021, WhatsApp took an unusual initiative towards dealing with users’ privacy. On January 4, 2021, WhatsApp announced that it was going to revise its privacy policy, all the users must accept the terms and service until February 8, 2021, or their accounts would be deleted. The new privacy policy is about sharing more information about WhatsApp’s users with its Parent company Facebook and other companies owned by Facebook. The topic has been a top trending on various social media platforms especially on Twitter, many of the WhatsApp users have been posting that they had deleted their accounts and shifted to another instant messaging service like Telegram and Signal.


YouTube Channel Social Factory TV

The misinformation was circulated among the masses about providing users’ information to third-party like Facebook and its companies, but the fact is that WhatsApp has not mentioned in their new privacy policy update that it would provide all users’ data to the third party. WhatsApp will share those users’ information who communicate with businesses, if a user provides any content with any business, it may be visible to other users as well, in that business.


WhatsApp is still bound with its end-to-end-encryption policy for common WhatsApp Messenger users but the policy change has been announced only for those users who interact with WhatsApp businesses. As per the newly announced update of WhatsApp’s privacy policy, data of these users may be shared with the third party or WhatsApp’s business partners like Facebook and its owned companies i.e.

Facebook Payments Inc. and Facebook Payments International Limited

Onavo

Facebook Technologies, LLC and Facebook Technologies Ireland Limited

WhatsApp Inc. and WhatsApp Ireland Limited

Crowd Tangle


Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, posted a thread on his Twitter account some days ago, saying that “With end-to-end encryption, we cannot see your private chats or calls and neither can Facebook. We’re committed to this technology and committed to defending it globally.” 


He wrote in a Twitter thread that WhatsApp updated its policy to be transparent and to better describe optional people-to-business features. WhatsApp wrote about it in October in its blog, this includes commerce on WhatsApp and the ability for people to message a business.


“It's important for us to be clear this update describes business communication and does not change WhatsApp’s data-sharing practices with Facebook. It does not impact how people communicate privately with friends or family wherever they are in the world,” WhatsApp head tried to clear misperceptions among the users in his Twitter thread.


WhatsApp users have reacted with anger to the revised privacy policy and shown their discontent to accept it anyway, many of the users have already left and deleted their WhatsApp account. They said they would switch to other famous messaging services like Telegram and Signal right away. WhatsApp has remained a top trend on Twitter, people from different countries around the globe have been criticizing privacy policy update.


Journalists in Turkey were told by President Erdogan’s media representative that WhatsApp chat groups will be moved from WhatsApp to a locally-developed messaging app BiP, Turkish Defense Ministry also announced the same. BiP is a Turkish local encrypted messaging app that has been developed by Turkish mobile network giant Turkcell. The company tweeted on January 10, 2021, that two million new users joined it during the last 48 hours.


The Digital Transformation Office head of the Turkish Presidency Mr. Ali Taha Koc said in a tweet that “The distinction between EU members and other countries in terms of data privacy is unacceptable! As we have referred in the Information and Communication Security Guideline, foreign applications carry significant risks regarding data security.”


Weirdly, WhatsApp is using discriminatory practices against the users who are living out of the EU. There are different Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for European regions and outside the European regions.

 

Some Indian newspapers also announced to move their WhatsApp chat groups from WhatsApp to Telegram.


The Telegram was launched in 2013 by brothers Pavel Durov and Nikolai in Russia but now its headquarters is located in London UK, and its operations centre is situated in Dubai UAE. Due to WhatsApp’s privacy update concerns, a large number of users after leaving the platform, have joined Telegram.

The founder of Telegram Mr. Pavel has written on his Telegram channel yesterday that Telegram has recorded 25 million new users over the last 72 hours. “People no longer want to exchange their privacy for free services. They no longer want to held hostage by tech monopolies that seem to think they can get away with anything as long as their apps have a critical mass of users,” Pavel Durov wrote.


Another messaging app Signal has also seen an immense surge in new users. Signal wrote on Twitter that they will continue to add more capacity as more users come to their platform.


The Federal government of Pakistan is also considering to introduce a robust user data protection law, Minister of Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry has tweeted on January 10. “Instead of unilateral approach, such policy changes should have been made after wider consultation,” he wrote in a tweet.


Even after a comprehensive clarification given by WhatsApp’s head Will Cathcart, most of the WhatsApp users are still in dilemma whether to continue with it or should they switch to another encrypted messaging apps like Telegram, Signal or others. Because WhatsApp has now forced its users to either accept their updated Terms of Service or the accounts would be deleted.

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