EA Explainer: What You Need to Know About Whatsapp’s New Forced Privacy Policy

Facebook is once again trending for the wrong reasons. The parent company of Whatsapp is being dragged for the recent forced acceptance of its updated privacy policy and terms of use which is forcing users to share information with Facebook or stop using the app.

If you use Whatsapp, like almost everyone with a smartphone in this part of the world does, you must have seen the notification prompting you to accept the new terms of risk being able to make use of the app.

On 6th January, users across Africa received this prompt notifying that the app’s terms were changing, specifically the information to be shared with Facebook.

One major difference between this new update to the platform’s privacy policy is the inability of users to opt out of it. For this one, you either accept or stop using the app.

“If you are an existing user, you can choose not to have your WhatsApp account information shared with Facebook to improve your Facebook ads and products experiences,” the old policy stated.

However, this new policy states that:

“As part of the Facebook Companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, the other Facebook Companies.”

Question is, why is Facebook adopting such a stringent measure and approach. Well according to Facebook, the sharing of information will be for the following purposes:

• improving their services and your experiences using them, such as making suggestions for you (for example, of friends or group connections, or of interesting content), personalizing features and content, helping you complete purchases and transactions, and showing relevant offers and ads across the Facebook Company Products; and
• providing integrations which enable you to connect your WhatsApp experiences with other Facebook Company Products

So what information will the app be sharing with Facebook?

The collected and shared information will include:

• your phone number
• transaction data (purchases made)
• “service-related information”
• information on how you interact with others (including businesses)
• mobile device information
• IP address
• Other information Facebook may collect with cookies

So much for information collection you probably say. The company also says the new terms and privacy policy will take effect from February 8, 2021.

So for those who are ultra privacy conscious or feel this is something they would want to opt out from, there is ample of time to decide and a number of alternatives like Telegram and iMessage are there for you to adopt.

You can read through the new privacy policy here on the company’s website.