If you haven’t been living under a rock, you probably know that WhatsApp has received a lot of negative press recently for its new privacy policy. There is no getting around the fact that the business would begin exchanging data with its parent corporation, Facebook, the following month. You must agree to the conditions in order to continue using WhatsApp. Users who care about privacy are outraged by this and are switching to safer alternatives like Signal and Telegram. Due to the uproar over its policy modification, WhatsApp has now been compelled to address misinformation and better explain its position on data sharing.
WhatsApp Clarifies its Privacy Policy Update
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Individual and Group chats are Encrypted
WhatsApp has made the decision to dispel any lingering questions over its revised privacy policy with an official FAQ page.
We want to be clear that the updated policy has no impact on the privacy of the messages you send to friends and family, according to the messaging juggernaut. End-to-end encryption is still used to protect your private messages, as stated in the tweet you can see below.
We want to address some rumors and be 100% clear we continue to protect your private messages with end-to-end encryption. pic.twitter.com/6qDnzQ98MP
WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) January 12, 2021
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Can Facebook See your WhatsApp Contacts or Location?
Your private messages and calls are end-to-end encrypted, so neither WhatsApp nor Facebook can read them or overhear them. Who you call or text is not recorded by the business. It claims that while telecom companies often preserve this data, WhatsApp does not because doing so poses a significant security risk to its 2 billion users.
Worried WhatsApp can see your contact list or precise location? Will it share the same with Facebook so that ads may be more effectively targeted? It is not possible to see your shared location, according to the FAQ page. According to the messaging behemoth, sharing your live location within the app is also end-to-end encrypted and only visible to the sender and recipient.
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Data Sharing Happens When you Interact with Businesses
WhatsApp claims that in order to make messaging quick and dependable, it only accesses the phone numbers from your address book.
It differs from Facebook in this regard. Additionally, it is claimed that your group chats are private and won’t be abused by third parties or used to target advertisements. Setting the message to expire after 7 days will help you protect your privacy more effectively. As an additional privacy protection, WhatsApp launched this feature earlier in the year.
WhatsApp Privacy Policy Update: What Will Be Your Move?
WhatsApp claims to have modified its conditions to make clearer how it uses and collects user data. It modifies how companies can manage data. What information does WhatsApp want to share with Facebook, then? You will be aware that firms may store your messages and use them for marketing purposes if you have read the new privacy policy. A company that employs a third-party hosting service gets access to your data as well, and they can subsequently share it with their partners. Facebook is encouraging companies to utilise its own hosting services in an effort to prevent this and close this privacy gap.
Your buying behaviour (how you interact with products or any business) can be used to customise your experience when you use the Facebook Shops feature, which is gradually being integrated into the WhatsApp Business app.
The fact that this feature is optional implies that you voluntarily won’t contact companies to tell them not to share any data with Facebook or them. The updated WhatsApp privacy policy is detailed here:
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