WhatsApp has a new plan to explain the controversial privacy policy – the one that came under fire when users became concerned that the platform would share their messages with parent company Facebook. The company explained in an announcement on Thursday how users can read through the new policy and learn how business and personal messages – which have different privacy standards – are handled.
The new privacy policy mainly covers messages on WhatsApp and what parts of your data the businesses have access to. Most WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted, which means they are only accessible to people who are actually talking. But WhatsApp also lets users send messages to businesses, and the messages are not given the same protection. The data in business messages can be used for commercial purposes, such as ad targeting on Facebook, and some of it is also stored on the Facebook servers. WhatsApp’s privacy policy was an attempt to explain the change, but many users interpreted it as WhatsApp consisting of the privacy focus for which it was known.
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Ahead of the new launch on May 15 (moved from February 8), WhatsApp plans to give users the opportunity to review this new privacy policy in their app. The company has already tried to reassure users through WhatsApp’s status feature, but now WhatsApp will include a banner that can be typed to pull up the explanation of the new policy. The company says it will eventually remind users to read the new policy and accept it to continue using the app as well.
WhatsApp also notes that businesses pay for the right to use WhatsApp to reach customers, and this is one of the ways WhatsApp can offer its app for free. The key features of WhatsApp remain as private as ever. Of course, it’s not as private as some users think: In 2016, WhatsApp shared personal information like phone numbers and profile photos with Facebook to enhance friend recommendations and ads in the app.
WhatsApp’s tone in this repetition of its policy change is somewhat apologetic. It has not declared what has changed well enough for users, and it is the owner of it. But WhatsApp also managed to look at other companies that welcomed the exit from WhatsApp requested by the policy:
During this time, we understood that people might want to explore other programs to see what they offer. We’ve seen some of our competitors try to get away with claiming they can not see people’s messages – if an app does not provide standard encryption, it can read your messages. Other apps say they are better because they know even less information than WhatsApp. We believe that people are looking for apps to be reliable and secure, even if it requires WhatsApp to have limited data. We strive to be considerate about the decisions we make, and we will continue to develop new ways of fulfilling these responsibilities with less information, not more.
WhatsApp refers obliquely to Telegram, an app that, together with Signal, seems to benefit of the confusion about what has changed in WhatsApp. Telegram has dealt with its own criticism of the fact that they do not enable standard encryption – and WhatsApp clearly does not want you to forget that.