WhatsApp clarifies issues with new policy – referring privacy concerns as “rumors”

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WhatsApp has previously seen several crises under the parenthood of Facebook, however, its latest privacy policy was the bombshell of all crises it had faced.

The instant messaging platform, last week has been the recipient of heavy criticism due to its updated privacy policy which is now required for all users to agree to. If users don’t agree till February 8, 2021, they will be left with no choice but delete their WhatsApp account and uninstall the app.

The biggest factor that concerned the community was the sharing of data with parent company Facebook and its other companies. It was probably the very first event that people actually thought if they really need to stick with their favourite messaging service, or it’s the time to say goodbye and switch over.

Since the day, the new privacy policy appeared, Singal and Telegram started trending on social media to be the major alternatives. However, now, WhatsApp has taken the criticism seriously and issued a clarification regarding its new policy, while regarding most of the understanding of the community as rumours.

WhatsApp says that personal or private chats with family or friends would not be affected by changes. It said that the update will affect your messaging with a business contact on WhatsApp, which is optional. It will affect messaging with only those businesses which use certain business features that Facebook offers, such as Facebook hosting services, new commerce features, discovering a business, etc.

WhatsApp Clarification Privacy Policy

WhatsApp further explains several elements in detail which, and how they will be affected by its new policy.

While the service provider released a faq page on its website, it also shared a couple of posts on its Twitter handle and on its Facebook page. The Facebook-owned messaging platform said that its new privacy policy will not affect the privacy of the users’ chats with their friends and family, as the messages sent on chats would continue to be protected by end-to-end encryption.

In a simple way, the messaging platform wants to explain that its recent policy update was related to messaging with businesses on WhatsApp.

The platform highlights that messages, photos, videos or anything sent or received between personal contacts and/or private group chats are end-to-end encrypted. Neither WhatsApp nor Facebook can read your messages or hear your calls with your friends, family, and co-workers on WhatsApp. Whatever you share, it stays between you.” It further gives you a detailed article about how its security works.

When initially Facebook bought WhatsApp, it said the famous messaging platform will stay independent of the interference of Facebook or its other apps and services. However, it steadily kept moving towards minor integration features with Facebook and other its companies. However, the recent policy shift forcing users to allow the service to share their information with third-parties or delete the WhatsApp account otherwise, happened to be the most strict one. It indeed made the community think about their private data and choose an alternate service instead.

Have you chosen to stay with WhatsApp? Now that it has tried to explain things well, should you not worry what this famous messaging platform will come up with next? Do you really think its the only option you can use for instant messaging? Well, indeed there are few other popular ones as well, such as Signal or Telegram. We’ll want to hear from you about your opinion. What are you thinking about your WhatsApp? Do tell us in the comments below.