Vickie Remoe Institute of Digital Communications

WhatsApp updates a new controversial privacy policy about users personal data

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WhatsApp is updating its Privacy Policy and you could lose your account if you don’t accept the  new terms and conditions after the 8th of February 

you would have probably seen or received the new WhatsApp Privacy Policy that requires you to accept the new terms and conditions on or before the 8th of February, and probably you would have accepted it without knowledge of what this new privacy policy means. However, the new privacy policy has caused a big outrage online and people are calling for the boycott of WhatsApp over its new privacy policy with its parent company Facebook.  

What are things you should know about the new privacy policy and what it means for your personal data and how it is used?

The new privacy policy is an update from WhatsApp on how it communicates and shares your personal data with its parent company Facebook in terms of improving its integration of Facebook and WhatsApp services for its users. This means that you are forced to share your personal data including your phone number, the numbers in your contact, information about how you interact with your contacts, your IP address, browser details, language and timezone of your location. 

Since the announcement of the new privacy policy  was made by WhatsApp on the 7th of January, a huge debate has unfolded online on how the app shares its personal data with Facebook for advertising purposes. This has caused competition between WhatsApp and other messaging apps in terms of downloads. For instance messaging app Telegram has increased to 1.7 million and Signal gained about 1.2 million downloads. Popular tech guru and richest billionaire Elon Musk has called for the boycott of WhatsApp and asked his followers to switch to Signal

However, WhatsApp Head Will Cathcart, has responded on Twitter that the privacy policy change still guarantees users privacy on their personal messages.

However, the new privacy policy would not cover the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (EU). WhatsApp has a membership of over 2 billion active users. The company was bought by its current parent company Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion United States Dollars. Since then there has been one controversy after another about its privacy policy terms and conditions and how it shares information with Facebook and which type of data it shares about its users.


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