Looks like there’s no way out of WhatsApp’s new privacy terms as the messaging platform has once again communicated to its over 2 billion users worldwide in a new blog post about the controversy surrounding the update for its privacy policy terms. The update that should have happened on 08th February 2020 has since been pushed to 15th May 2021 as a result of all the negative feedback it has received.
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There have been attempts since the notification appeared on users’ phones in January to explain that the new privacy policy doesn’t put customers data at risk and that people’s private messages will remain private. The new privacy policy indicates that WhatsApp will share information with Facebook which it says is an attempt to improve their users’ experience and enable seamless interaction between the two apps for business accounts.
The Facebook-owned app has communicated in its most recent blog post that the changes to the privacy policy still hold and on May 15th users will have to choose between accepting those terms or using the app. It explained that there was the possibility that users might not have understood the upcoming changes because of the language the company used.
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Use of banners to explain WhatsApp’s new privacy terms
To make it easy for people to understand this, the messaging platform will display a banner in the app in the coming days which will provide more information that people can read at their own pace. The company explained that it will start reminding people to review and accept these updates to keep using WhatsApp.
WhatsApp has a few words for competitors those are; Telegram and Signal. Many WhatsApp users have moved to Telegram and Signal with these apps observing record-breaking downloads in such a short period of time all thanks to WhatsApp’s new privacy terms that created so much controversy.
The popular messaging app however commented on the recent switch of its users to other apps and said, “We understand some people may check out other apps to see what they have to offer. We’ve seen some of our competitors try to get away with claiming they can’t see people’s messages- if an app doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption by default that means they can read your messages. Other apps say they’re better because they know even less information than WhatsApp. We believe people are looking for apps to be both reliable and safe, even if that requires WhatsApp having some limited data.”
One of the things WhatsApp received backlash for was how much personal information it collected from its users compared to other messaging apps. In addition to WhatsApp’s new privacy terms, customers used the opportunity to review details they ignored before like the amount of information WhatsApp collected from its users. In comparison to Telegram and Signal, WhatsApp was really on the losing end.
