WhatsApp Privacy Policy Explained: Is Your Data on Stake?

WhatsApp Privacy Policy 2021 forces users to agree to the policy terms or else their account will get deleted after a month and users can no longer access the most popular messaging app. The newly updated privacy policy from WhatsApp gives the accessed data to Facebook for various reasons that they mentioned in the policy.

WhatsApp is a messaging platform that is the most popular and widely used application around the world for communication. WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook in the year 2014 for $19 Billion. The users of WhatsApp have received an in-app notification to agree with the new Privacy Policy terms for WhatsApp.

WhatsApp Privacy Policy and Facebook’s vision for the collected data

In other words, the updated WhatsApp Privacy Policy helps Facebook to offer integrations across the Facebook Company Products such as Instagram and Messenger. Users of WhatsApp have to agree to these terms before 8 February 2021, if not the data such as chats and call history on their WhatsApp cannot be accessed.

WhatsApp Privacy Policy - New

The users were notified with statements such as “By tapping Agree, you accept the new terms, which take effect on February 8, 2021,” and “After this date, you’ll need to accept the new terms to continue using WhatsApp. You can also visit the Help Center if you would prefer to delete your account.”, were shown to the users on the in-app notification from WhatsApp.

Facebook gets the most out of the new WhatsApp Privacy Policy because now WhatsApp can share your information with third-party service providers. Facebook uses the collected data for its services across its products for displaying personalized ads as per their usage data. This is the main aspect of the change in the Privacy Policy of WhatsApp.

WhatsApp collects data from a user’s device such as Device Model, Operating System, IP Address, Time Zone, Battery Status, Signal Strength, and Usage stats of WhatsApp. In this way, Facebook with the new WhatsApp Privacy Policy can access literally every piece of data that is collected from the app on your device.

Users that interact with WhatsApp Business where businesses use WhatsApp for providing services and have access to your data with not one but several other services which can be creepy. WhatsApp in their Privacy Policy also included a line that implies there might be a possibility for banner ads on the app in the future.

Many users have expressed their dissatisfaction with the New WhatsApp Privacy Policy and are planning to switch to other messaging mediums such as Signal and Telegram which are open source and have no compromises with the privacy policy. People have started tweeting to delete WhatsApp and migrate to the above mentioned messaging apps.

These updates with Privacy Policy are quite normal in recent times but users have to take a wise decision of choosing the app which values their privacy. Users can still continue to use the app even though with the New WhatsApp Privacy Policy if the user has accepted the agreement. You can check out the New WhatsApp Privacy Policy from here.

What do you think of the New Privacy Policy of WhatsApp? Let us know in the comments below.

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