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At the beginning of the year, WhatsApp unleashed controversy over certain changes in its privacy policy that would affect millions of people. The truth is that these changes should have already come into force. However, many users began an exodus to other platforms, such as Telegram or Signal, and WhatsApp managements have decided to extend the deadline to explain themselves better.

Therefore, from now on, all those who use WhatsApp will see statuses and banners that aim to make you understand more precisely what the changes in its terms and conditions of use consist of.

WhatsApp’s New Privacy Policy

WhatsApp Privacy Policy

WhatsApp is an application that has been owned by Facebook for more than 6 years. Mark Zuckerberg’s company plans a total integration of all its social platforms, especially those that are responsible for connecting users through messages. Therefore, the logical thing to do is to adapt the privacy policies of all its applications to share more data.

To make this possible, WhatsApp will start sharing data such as your phone number, the contacts you interact with, the groups you are in, and the companies you reach out to through the app. Facebook will collect all that data and use it for things like:

  • Improve its services and messaging platforms.
  • Analyze how users use its network services.
  • Improve the security of its products. In that sense, it will work to reduce spam, threats, abuses, or any other type of activity that exceeds legal limits.
  • Improve the user experience of its services. Of course, at this point, we must mention the personalized advertisement that Facebook applies to its platforms and applications to adapt them to each user.
  • Integrate other Facebook services in WhatsApp. This is crucial so that we will soon be able to make payments to other users or businesses through Facebook Pay. It is also required to integrate WhatsApp with Facebook Messenger.
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Facebook Pay

After this changes review, WhatsApp plans to introduce in the personal data processing, we must emphasize that this does not affect the content we send. It is important to differentiate between the tracking done thanks to functions of our cell phone, such as contacts or location, and the analysis of messages. No, WhatsApp will not be able to access any content we send because all conversations, calls, and video calls will continue to be covered under end-to-end encryption.

All these changes will come into effect on May 15, more than three months after the first date proposed by WhatsApp, on February 8. And, during that time, users will see announcements warning of these new policies and explaining to them so that they are understandable to everyone. The acceptance of this new internal regulation will be mandatory and, in the case of not consenting, a definitive loss of the account may occur.

What WhatsApp Privacy in Europe?

Europe

Everything discussed so far in this article has a limited impact on European users. Why? According to the provisions of the European Data Protection Law, commonly known as GDPR, WhatsApp cannot share data with Facebook to improve the platform.

Thus, if a European user of the service accepts the new terms and conditions, absolutely nothing will change in their case. The company that manages the service in Europe is WhatsApp Ireland Limited and not WhatsApp LLC.

According to official information from the company, the countries not affected by the privacy changes are Andorra, Austria, Azores, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Isle of Man, Canary Islands, Channel Islands, Italy, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Vatican City, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madeira, Malta, Martinique, Mayotte, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom and its sovereign bases in Cyprus (Akrotiri and Dhekelia), Czech Republic, Republic of Cyprus, Reunion, Romania, San Marino, Sint Maarten, Sweden, and Switzerland.

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