WhatsApp has updated its privacy policy sparking controversy among its users. WhatsApp, owned by Facebook is currently being used by billions of people around the world. WhatsApp during its acquisition by Facebook in 2014 assured that data inside WhatsApp would be shared “as little as possible”.
After February 18, users of WhatsApp have to agree to its updated privacy policy to continue using its services.
What information is shared ?
Some of the info WhatsApp is collecting and will be sharing includes location data, IP addresses, phone model, OS, battery level, signal strength, browser, mobile network, ISP, language, time zone, and even IMEI. There’s also the information about how you are messaging, calling, what groups you are attending, the Status, the profile photo, last time the you were online, etc.
With its new UPI transactions being added to the platform, the app would process the payment information for analytic purposes although it would provide its unique identifiers to other Facebook Companies.
Users started to show their disappointment on social media platforms with the hashtag #WhatsappNewPolicy.
With the policy update, there has been a huge interest for alternate messaging platforms with Telegram and Signal being the choice of app among users. Though Telegram has been the talk whenever the term “privacy” comes up, Signal is fairly a new player in the market offering similar features as Whatspp. Elon Musk recently asked his followers to “Use Signal”.
Signal, an app by Signal Foundation and Signal Messaging LLC, a non-profit company founded by WhatsApp co-founder Brain Acton. Signal claims that it only stores your phone information apart from authentication tokens required for technical reasons to enable messaging and calls. Like WhatsApp, Signal does offer end-end encryption. Also, Signal queues the messages on its servers when user on the other end is temporarily offline. Signal does not share any of users information to third party companies.
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