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Time to say 'Goodbye' to WhatsApp?

WhatsApp is a fundamental messaging application that people use to communicate. It has over 2 billion monthly users across the world. Time can change anything. The new Policy of WhatsApp makes people worry a lot about their Privacy. Here's what it is.  

  Why it is so Famous?

       WhatsApp is simple is a messenger application. It was founded in February 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, former employees of Yahoo!. The fun fact is before they found WhatsApp they applied for a job on Facebook, but they were rejected and their WhatsApp is now owned by Facebook.

    WhatsApp became the blind option for people to communicate because, unlike traditional SMS, WhatsApp is free to use with the bonus that it has a bunch of other features that SMS doesn't. Every message that you send through WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, which means that WhatsApp can never watch our chats even if they dive and search into all of their servers, which means the only thing that they'll get is some garbage stuff.

     The rapid growth of WhatsApp (which was faster than the growth of Facebook) attracted Facebook and it turned them to acquire WhatsApp. It seems that Facebook Messenger was not on the path they dreamt of. On February 19, 2014, months after a venture capital financing round at a $1.5 billion valuation, Facebook, Inc. announced it was acquiring WhatsApp for US$19 billion

     Basically, WhatsApp won the trust of users. It became a fundamental application in every smartphone. If you have the phone number of any person, you can not only contact him through SMS or call, in most use cases you can contact also him through WhatsApp. Two mains reasons for this are Simple and Secure

WhatsApp seems not, what it used to be

     Here are the reasons why WhatsApp is different from the initial stage. In 2016, Facebook updated the Terms of Service for WhatsApp, their idea is to integrate all its messaging platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to provide a coherent experience to its users (also for ads). But this was optional. that users can choose if their data can be shared with the parent company.

credit: thehackernews                                                                                                                                 

     Now, it seems that Facebook has again updated the Terms of Service, for WhatsApp, about the sharing of user's data with Facebook, which was supposed to take effect from February 8,2021, now postponed to may 15,2021 due to a lot of controversies. This time we don't have an option to choose not to share data with anyone. 

      The key updates concern how it processes user data, "how businesses can use Facebook hosted services to store and manage their WhatsApp chats," and "how we (WhatsApp) partner with Facebook to offer integrations across the Facebook Company Products


Credit: Beebom                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
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"We collect information about your activity on our Services, like service-related, diagnostic,      and performance information. This includes information about your activity (including how      you use our Services, your Services settings, how you interact with others using our Services    (including when you interact with a business), and the time, frequency, and duration of your    activities and interactions), log files, and diagnostic, crash, website, and performance logs and  reports.                                                                                                                                                                                                  This also includes information about when you registered to use our Services; the features     you use like our messaging, calling, Status, groups (including group name, group picture,   group description), payments or business features; profile photo, "about" information;  whether you are online, when you last used our Services (your "last seen"); and when you last updated your "about" information".

     This is how updated Terms of Service spells like, collected data also includes hardware model, operating system information, battery level, signal strength, app version, browser information, mobile network, connection information (including phone number, mobile operator or ISP), language, and time zone, IP address, device operations information. 

     If the users fail to agree to the revised terms by the cut-off date will have their accounts rendered inaccessible, the company said in the notification. This effectively means that, while the profiles will remain inactive, WhatsApp will eventually end up deleting the accounts after 120 days of inactivity (i.e. not connected to the app). 

     Even though WhatsApp never had advertisements on it, the new Terms of Service hints that in the future there's a possibility to display ads on WhatsApp. The reason why we're stating this is that the new Policy had an extra statement "We have no intention to introduce them, but if we ever do, we will update this Privacy Policy"

Screenshot from WhatsApp Privacy Policy - Feb 2021


      Why the new policy/terms raise concerns? Though WhatsApp has been collecting data from its users since its inception, we are now talking about integrating the database with Facebook, which could on a future date resort to targeted advertising and political campaigns based on user information. Also, it raises privacy concerns as it plans to monetize the user data.

Screenshot from WhatsApp Privacy Policy - Feb 2021

Still, WhatsApp assures these

        ➤ It doesn't share your messages with anyone ( even they can't read your message)
        ➤ It doesn't share your exact location with Facebook
        ➤ The content and the media files that you share through chats are never monitored
        ➤ As of now, it doesn't shows any kind of advertisements
        ➤ Your voice and video calls are still end-to-end encrypted, WhatsApp can never record or monitor those calls.
Source: WhatsApp


Conclusion

     Here's our final conclusion. Do we mean the user's to uninstall WhatsApp and install other alternatives out there? Obviously, NO. WhatsApp is now at its finest version, there isn't any perfect alternative at this moment. It's practically impossible to make every user change to an alternative. Even though WhatsApp can't monitor any kind of chats, but the data they're collecting make people concerned.

     We can still observe that the transition period has begun now, but one problem here users to turning not to a single messaging platform, but to the platforms which they like at this moment. It requires time to decide the best messaging platform whichever it is. Only time can answer whether is this an end to WhatsApp or not?. 

     Share your thoughts on the new Privacy Policy and help us improve by sharing your views on the ways this blog is expressed. 

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Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 12, 2021 at 12:53 PM

    Great blog!!! Gives a clear cut thoughts of new updated policy... keep going on👏👏👏

    ReplyDelete
  2. Photography tips and tricks by adhvick photography January 12, 2021 at 2:01 PM

    Gave a clear cut explanation abt the prblm... Need a blog about alternate

    ReplyDelete

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