Should I accept the new privacy rules from WhatsApp?

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If you are a user of the App ‘Whatsapp’ you may have noticed the reminder about their privacy policy changing. The new policy will require sharing data with their parent company, Facebook, if you don’t, you will have some of the Apps key features restricted.
The restrictions won’t apply immediately, according to the App company, they will give their users plenty of time to review the changed policy and decide whether to accept the new conditions. They have stated: “No one will have their accounts deleted or lose functionality of WhatsApp on May 15th because of this update. For the last several weeks we’ve displayed a notification in WhatsApp providing more information about the update.

After giving everyone time to review, we’re continuing to remind those who haven’t had the chance to do so to review and accept. After a period of several weeks, the reminder people receive will eventually become persistent,” The persistent reminder appears, the app’s functionality will become more and more limited over time – unless the user accepts the updated policy.


The company went on to add that this won’t affect all users at the same time.At first, users will still be able to answer both phone calls and video calls, but won’t be able to access their chat lists; however, if they have notifications enabled they will still be able to reply to messages and return missed calls. After this goes on for a few weeks, WhatsApp will no longer send any messages or calls to the user’s device.
Users who’ll refuse to accept the terms won’t have their accounts deleted by the company. They can download a report of their account and export their chat history before they move on to another platform and delete their WhatsApp accounts.


The app company have tried to assure users that the changes are only geared towards communications with businesses only and that all other communications would remain private and secure, Indeed, the policy has no implications for the privacy of users’ conversations – those remain end-to-end encrypted and neither WhatsApp nor Facebook will be able view the contents of messages or listen in on user calls, or keep logs of who users interact with, among other things. WhatsApp also says it doesn’t keep records of your call logs, share your contacts with Facebook and can’t see your shared location.
But, despite these assurances, reports suggest that WhatsApp clients have been leaving in favour of other platforms like Signal and telegram.


Footnote: WhatsApp users in Europe are exempt from the new rules.


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