Millions of Indian users received an in-app notification from WhatsApp as part of an upcoming global roll-out for over 2 billion users, asking them to either accept the changes in its Terms of Service and privacy policy by February 8 or their accounts will be deleted.
A question arises on how many people will opt to update and how many people will switch for the alternate to WhatsApp.
As part of a larger unification drive between the family of apps. WhatsApp will collect and process users' information going forward, and the partnership with Facebook, its parent company,
WhatsApp must receive or collect some information to operate, provide, improve, understand, customise, support, and market our Services, including when you install, access, or use our Services," the updated policy read.
The new privacy policy and terms of service to share more user data with parent Facebook Inc. While personal chats between users will not be shared with Facebook, the revised privacy norms allows the sharing of data on business interactions across the group, reflecting Mark Zuckerberg's aggressive move to build a messaging commerce powerhouse.
Last year Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO in October said that the company is working hard to merge Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp so that they can start to function a little bit more like one connected interoperable system. The social network has already integrated Messenger rooms with WhatsApp on the Web.
The main competition to WhatsApp is Signal, the application offers voice and video calling similar to WhatsApp and is extremely easy to use, Every message is encrypted and is susceptible to hackers. The messaging app also has a disappearing text feature where a message can be automatically deleted after setting a timer.
WhatsApp rival Signal witnessed a significant surge in new users after Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk, the newly minted world’s richest person, endorsed the messaging service amid reported changes to WhatsApp’s terms of service. Signal then saw a flood of new users attempting to sign in, leading to verification issues. An expert says, if there is migration facility available, then all communicaions from WhatsApp to Signal will be easier.
Other alternate to WhatsApp is Telegram, Telegram is the most popular alternative to WhatsApp with over 200 million users at the moment. The app can work across multiple platforms and offers end-to-end encryption for voice calls. Similar to Signal Telegram also offers disappearing messages after a certain time. Telegram also supports stickers, animated emojis, GIFs and all multimedia file sharing.
Now the real challenge is, Facebook will not have any access to a user’s details of a digital transaction through WhatsApp Pay as its India payments policy will overrule any privacy changes of the messaging platform.
The announcement is a stoke for the privacy fears among users in India, as it enjoys the largest market with 400 million monthly active users. Prior to this update, users could choose not to share any information with Facebook. Now, one must agree to it to use the messaging service.
If there is any conflict between the India payments privacy policy and the WhatsApp privacy policy, the India payments privacy policy will control solely with respect to your use of payments, and only to the extent of the conflict,” the WhatsApp’s India payments policy says.
An expert says, it may save the technology cost, but Whastapp will lose certain business from the SMEs in the country. WhatsApp says that ,messages between two people will continue to be encrypted and a third person would not be able to see it. In case of messaging with a business or store on WhatsApp, the content may be visible to multiple people. Many businesses on WhatsApp also work with Facebook separately.
At the same time, the company said in a statement, the update will make it easier for people to make purchases and get help from businesses on the messaging platform. It remains up to the user whether or not they want to message with a business on WhatsApp, the spokesperson said.
The company also stated, the update does not change WhatsApp’s data-sharing practices with Facebook and WhatsApp remains deeply committed to protecting people’s privacy.
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