WhatsApp, one of the world’s most popular instant messaging platforms, owned by social media giant Facebook, is updating its terms of service and privacy policy which will go into effect next month.
The company has started alerting the users in India about the same. The updated terms and mostly related to how it processes user data. Those users who fail to agree to the revised terms will not be able the use their account and can delete it.
With the new changes, WhatsApp will be able to share more user data with other Facebook companies, including details like account registration information, phone numbers, transaction data, service-related information, interactions on the platform, mobile device information, IP address, and other data collected by the company.
The new privacy policy also details the information that is being collected by WhatsApp from its users, which includes hardware model, operating system information, battery level, signal strength, app version, browser information, mobile network, connection information (including phone number, mobile operator or ISP), language and time zone, IP address, device operations information, and identifiers.
This highlights that even though WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, the company is collecting so much data in the name of improving and supporting the service. In contrast, Signal, other IM app, doesn’t collect any metadata while iMessage from Apple only takes email id or phone number, search history, and a device ID to attribute a user uniquely.
The newly updated terms for using WhatsApp will be in effect from 8th February 2021 and the users can visit the Help Center on the company’s website to get more information about it.
