Well… well… well… WhatsApp has decided to push back the date for its privacy policy after public outcry. For most of this week, people were up in arms with WhatsApp after it said that you could no longer opt-out of sharing your information with Facebook and it’s family of apps.
“We’re now moving back the date on which people will be asked to review and accept the terms. No one will have their account suspended or deleted on February 8. We’re also going to do a lot more to clear up the misinformation around how privacy and security works on WhatsApp. We’ll then go to people gradually to review the policy at their own pace before new business options are available on May 15.”
WhatsApp
The information that WhatsApp is going to share with its parent company includes profile name, contacts and financial information among others. This information is meant to help Facebook monetise the platform by using that data to send you targetted ads on its other platforms.
As I am sure you are well aware, Facebook makes a good chunk of its revenue through ads. WhatsApp is the only one of its heavy hitters that doesn’t feature ads. So the only way to extract more value from it is to use the data submitted by its users, who are also on Facebook’s other platforms.
The data shared with Facebook doesn’t include the messages you send because the platform is end-to-end encrypted. This means that not even WhatsApp can read your messages let alone Facebook.
Signal has really been struggling to cope with the demand
While WhatsApp dealt with the privacy policy backlash, Signal has been struggling to keep up with the demand. The app which saw a record number of downloads this week has been hit by a number of glitches.
The team at Signal has said that they are working to resolve the technical issue(s) as quickly as possible.
