WhatsApp explains privacy practices after boom in Signal and Telegram users

WhatsApp has published a new FAQ page on its website outlining its views on user privacy in response to widespread backlash over an upcoming privacy policy update. The key issue is related to WhatsApp’s data sharing procedures with Facebook, and many users have an updated privacy policy that takes effect on February 8, to share sensitive profile information with WhatsApp’s parent company.

This is not true – the update has nothing to do with consumer conversations or profile data, but the change is rather meant to show how businesses using WhatsApp for customer service may store logs of its chats on Facebook servers. This is something the company believes it should disclose in its privacy policy, which it is doing now after having a preview of the upcoming changes to business chats in October.

But a spate of misinformation on social media, which is not helped by Facebook’s heinous record on privacy and the reputation of obscuring the various terms of service agreements, has led to a complete WhatsApp setback leading users to competitors like Signal and Telegram.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk even jumped in, tweet last week “Use signal” to his more than 42 million followers. As the controversy escalated, Signal became one of the most downloaded apps on Android and iOS, and the new user login authentication system repeatedly came under pressure. Telegram, which is currently number 2 behind Signal in the App Store, has registered more than 25 million new users in the last 72 hours.

WhatsApp executives, as well as Instagram head Adam Mosseri and Facebook, AR / VR head Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, are now trying to set the record, perhaps to little avail at this point.

‘We want to make it clear that the policy update does not in any way affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family. Instead, this update includes changes related to the messages to a business on WhatsApp, which is optional, and provides transparency about how we collect and use data, ‘the company wrote on the new FAQ page.

It also emphasizes in the FAQ that Facebook or WhatsApp do not read users’ message files or listen to their calls, and that WhatsApp does not store user location data or share contact information with Facebook. (It is also noteworthy sharing data with Facebook is extremely limited for European users due to the stronger protection of the privacy of users in the EU.)

WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart Taken on Twitter a few days ago to post a thread (which Bosworth later shared in the tweet above) to cut through the confusion and explain what’s actually going on.

‘With end-to-end encryption, we can not see your private conversations or calls, nor Facebook. We are committed to this technology and are committed to defending it worldwide, ”Cathcart wrote. ‘It’s important for us to be clear. This update describes business communication and does not change the practice of WhatsApp to share data with Facebook. It does not affect how people communicate privately with friends or family wherever they are in the world. ”

A bit of irony in all of this is that the sharing of data that WhatsApp users so desperately want to avoid has probably already happened to the vast majority of those who use the messaging platform. The company excluded users from sharing data only for a short time in 2016, two years after Facebook bought the platform.

After that, new sign-ups and those who did not manually choose to share data shared WhatsApp information, primarily their phone number and profile name, with the larger social network for ad targeting and other purposes. (If you did not accept it, WhatsApp says it will honor it even after the February 8 update PCMag.)

If you look at the privacy labels for WhatsApp in the App Store, Apple only started forcing developers to release last month, you will see a lot of information marked as ‘data linked to you’, although only a unique ID and application information are listed as used for ‘advertiser and developer marketing’. (WhatsApp has tried to publicly sue Apple for not complying with its own first-party apps by the same standards, only to reply to Apple that it does indeed list privacy labels for the iOS apps it develops.)

In the forthcoming change in privacy policy, the language regarding the sharing of data with Facebook has changed, leading many people to believe that the new data sharing is a new change that could not be avoided, even though it is all the time happened. “As part of the Facebook family of companies, WhatsApp receives information from and shares it with this family of companies,” reads WhatsApp’s new privacy policy. “We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them to help operate, deliver, improve, understand, adapt, support and market our Services and their offerings.”

This whole controversy can be criticized in that users misread confusing media reports, jump to conclusions and then engage in intimidation on social media. But it’s also a reality that Facebook has to contend that the lack of trust in WhatsApp is directly related to years of bad promises of trust by Facebook and increasingly complicated terms of service agreements that no ordinary, non-lawyer user can reasonably understand.

It’s no wonder then that users flock to an app like Signal – run by a non-profit organization and made up of donations and prosperous benefactors like none other than WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton – if they feel that they can no longer trust what really happens when they send a message. their friends on their smartphone. Now Facebook and WhatsApp face a long road of transparent communication and trust building if they want to get the people back.