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Jaap Arriens | NurPhoto | Getty Images
WhatsApp has delayed an update to the privacy policy, which has caused confusion and backlash among users over concerns that this will mean more data sharing with the owner of the Facebook messaging app.
“We have heard from many people how much confusion there is around our recent update. There has been a lot of misinformation that is worrying and we want to help everyone understand our principles and the facts,” he said. WhatsApp said in a blog post this weekend. .
The updates relate specifically to the features that allow users to send messages and interact with businesses on WhatsApp. Last year, Facebook announced that businesses using WhatsApp can store and manage their conversations with customers using Facebook’s “secure hosting infrastructure”.
As part of this, a business can see the content of the message between itself and a user and can use this information for its own marketing purposes, which could include advertising on Facebook.
WhatsApp has been configured to start prompting users on February 8 to agree to the updated terms in order to continue using the app. But Facebook said it is now pushing back the date for people to review and agree to the terms. No one will see their account suspended or deleted on February 8, Facebook added. People will “gradually” have the opportunity to review the policy “at their own pace” before the new trade options become available on May 15.
The privacy updates have caused “confusion,” WhatsApp said. Many users figured out that the app would share more data, including messages, with Facebook.
Many users were concerned that the updated privacy policy would point to wider data sharing between WhatsApp and Facebook. But this is not the case. Since 2016, WhatsApp shares some data with Facebook like your phone number.
But the content of the messages cannot be seen by WhatsApp or Facebook. This is because they are encrypted. It doesn’t change.
However, users concerned about their privacy turned to competing messaging apps Signal and Telegram. Both of these apps market themselves as privacy-focused and both have reported an increase in downloads.
Signal suffered an outage on Saturday due to an influx of users. Signal said it was “adding new servers and additional capacity at an all-time high every day” last week and the app came back online on Sunday.
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