Certainly a few weeks ago you saw an official Whatsapp status that was made available to all users, explaining in detail how the application's privacy policy is.
For everyone who still has doubts and plans to abandon the application, the WhatsApp team has a new plan to explain its privacy policy. Recalling that it generated controversy and users began to abandon the application, concerned that the platform share your messages with Facebook (the company that owns Whatsapp).
In a new announcement, released on Thursday (18/02), the company explained how users can read the new policy to find the differences between personal and commercial profiles - which have different privacy standards.
The new privacy policy concerns mainly the messaging companies on WhatsApp and what parts of their data these companies have access to. Most WhatsApp messages have end-to-end encryption, which means that they can only be accessed by those who send and receive those messages.
But WhatsApp also allows users to send messages to companies, and those messages are not subject to the same protections. Commercial message data can be used for commercial purposes such as targeting ads on Facebook, and some of them are also stored on Facebook servers.
The application update is scheduled for May 15th (the initial date was February 8th), the WhatsApp team plans to offer users the possibility to review this new privacy policy within their application. The company has already tried to reassure users through WhatsApp states, but now WhatsApp will include a banner that can be exploited to get an explanation of the new privacy policy.
To defend itself against the need to share information with companies, WhatsApp explains that companies pay for the right to use WhatsApp to interact with customers, and this is one of the ways that WhatsApp can provide its application free of charge to end users.
In the official announcement, WhatsApp also managed to “attack” other companies that welcomed the departure of WhatsApp users, caused by the update of the privacy policy:
"During this time, we understand that some people can check other applications to see what they have to offer. We've already seen some of our competitors try to escape by claiming they can't see people's messages - if an application doesn't offer end-to-end encryption by default, that means they can read your messages.
Other applications say they are better because they know even less information than WhatsApp. We believe that people are looking for applications that are both reliable and secure, even if that requires WhatsApp to have some limited data.
We strive to be thoughtful in the decisions we make and will continue to develop new ways to fulfill these responsibilities with less information, not more."
The message above is obviously attacking Telegram and Signal, who were the most benefited by this situation.
