Information All About WhatsApp New Privacy Policy Update

WhatsApp – This word has become almost synonymous with communication in the modern world. Created by two former Yahoo employees, in the year 2009, WhatsApp soon became the world’s fastest-growing social network. At the very start when WhatsApp was launched as a one-to-one chat app service for IOS users, it didn’t receive as much popularity. But, once this platform was launched on android there was no looking back!

Recently, WhatsApp was again in limelight, but this time it was for the wrong reasons. Whenever we download any app, the app asks for certain permissions like audio, video, storage, and a few more. And, more often than not, users without any hesitation give all the permissions to the app. It’s a standard practice of changing privacy policy, once every few months. WhatsApp did the same thing with its privacy policy and all of a sudden, WhatsApp is all over the news. There are countries where certain sections of society have asked the central government to completely ban WhatsApp!

So, what are the major updates in the privacy policy that has made WhatsApp the villain?

Since Facebook bought WhatsApp, in the year 2014, a lot of speculations were made about the integration of both the social networking platforms. But nothing was confirmed. When Facebook bought Instagram, in the year 2019, it was just a matter of time before all the three social networks – all under Facebook, would be integrated.

Finally, a year after acquiring Instagram, Facebook has announced that WhatsApp would share its data with Facebook. And, this is the main thing over which WhatsApp has faced some serious backlash.

According to the new policy, they will be sharing all kinds of personal data – contact, location, payment history with Facebook. Now, this is something serious!

There are some who say that the company will be sharing all our personal chats, images, videos, etc. with Facebook. But this not correct. These all are rumors spread by some vicious ones. Our chats, calls will still be end-to-end encrypted. Not WhatsApp, nor Facebook will be able to see this information. Okay, so chats between me and my friends are safe! The next question that naturally comes is, what data, exactly, will WhatsApp be sharing with Facebook?

The first and foremost thing is, this is not the first time that our data will be shared with Facebook. Since 2016, data exchange with Facebook is already taking place. Be it the US, India, South America, except Europe – they have stringent data sharing laws, which forbid such data sharing. The information which has already been shared includes our account registration number, transaction data of transactions done through their payment gateway, and IP address to some extent.

Even our phone number is shared. The proof of this is right there when we open Facebook. You might have noticed that you get friend suggestions based on your contact list. And, this all is mentioned on the official website of WhatsApp.

But many believe that such sharing of data to Facebook would give them an unfair advantage. Like, if Facebook knows the spending habits of every user, then they could easily know which user prefers which type of products, in which range, and so on. So, let’s say, if Facebook were to enter the E-commerce market, then because they know spending habits they know which customers to target for which product. This gives them an unfair advantage over other E-commerce companies.