Recently, this message has been circulating in the Whatsapp messaging App which shocked most of users and left the rest clueless. If you are one of them who ignored it and as usual agreed to the terms and conditions without taking a glance at it, then your privacy is at stake.
Whatsapp had been acquired by Facebook two years ago and since then, it is the first ever policy where the latter had designed a service to borrow data from WhatsApp and use it to improve its friend suggestion algorithm plans. Also the messaging app’s new privacy policy gives permission to Facebook to access more data about users, allowing the social network to suggest phone contacts as friends, but may raise privacy concerns.
Facebook has claimed that it will help fight malicious accounts, better understand how people use the apps and it would not reveal any phone numbers by displaying them on the profiles of the user.
Interesting part of this whole new privacy policy is WhatsApp, which cancelled its annual subscription fee earlier this year and said it would begin to search for new ways of income, plans to begin testing business accounts in the coming months. Could this new policy be its source of revenue idea?
While WhatsApp's messages are end-to-end encrypted, which means the app cannot read them, it also has other information about the user such as their phone numbers and operating systems.
Whatsapp since collaborating with Facebook had not come up with any policy which planned to merge and inter-connect data with the latter and WhatsApp's founder Jan Koum had pledged to never compromise on the privacy policies and to remain independent denying the claims of compromise in policy while Facebook had acquired it.
Further, Facebook users feel that it already has the feature of displaying their phone numbers in their profile and they have disabled that option for their privacy sake, but Whatsapp's new feature is breaching into their privacy.
When we see from the point of view of business, Whatsapp policy is to create an ecosystem within group companies to share and access data towards analytics to predict consumer behaviour and attract companies for advertising and promotion which as per SEC Norms, PII or CCI can't be shared with customers consent.
The new policy emphasise on customer consent as the consumer base has reached to a saturation of unpredictability towards a change with no alternate competition; we are left with no option but to accept it in most cases or deny it and not reap its benefits. It is time for the Indian players to capitalise on opportunity and bring our own inventions at such cross roads.
UK's Information commission to probe
UK's information commissioner (ICO) and third-party organizations have decided to look into this move made by Facebook as they feel that aforementioned has taken the data protection laws a bit too lenient and the ICO has given out the word that, though the organisations do not need to get prior approval to make policy changes, it certainly will have to be within the laws.
How many of us know the privacy policy of the App we use so frequently?
Whatspp's privacy policy tab in each and every of our phones and other gadgets has clearly mentioned what are the information they collect from us once we start using their app.
It carries a long list from our Account Information, Messages, Your Connections, Transactional Information, Status Information to our Device and Connection Information and so on.
While Facebook promises not to breach into our privacy, sharing so much of personal information would some what impact us no matter what promises are made. Don't you think so?
How to stop Facebook from getting your WhatsApp data
WhatsApp users, who will receive an alert asking them to agree to the policy, will have to approve it in the next 30 days to continue using the app.
If you accepted the recent changes in Whatsapp terms and conditions. Go to settings - account and uncheck share my information.