WhatsApp Has Just Updated
Its Privacy Policy and Its
Effects Are Making Waves

WhatsApp is perhaps among the most used digital app in the world today, working as a global platform for effective real-time communications and multimedia content sharing. We use this app for work and entertainment alike. This communication service is essential for living in the hyper-connected society of today and allows us to reach any individual or group on the globe after a few clicks from our cellphones. This service is acclaimed worldwide and used by billions from every part of the world, the reason if offered would be security and privacy of our data. Just recently, the app has changed its privacy settings and speculations are now growing with worse being yet to come.

This brief article will highlight the key points as we go through the new WhatsApp privacy policy.

Our Activity on The App
WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, and it obtains information on how we use the application, meaning what are our usage settings, the time we use it, duration of interactions with other users, if we are active, analysis of the diagnostic reports of our browsing activity like if we prefer messages over video calls or not. It also tells if we are part of groups, our live status, and geolocation, among other things. The new thing is that it will also take into account our commercial activities, for example, the data of the transactions that we might make.

Fusion with Facebook
WhatsApp was once planning to include ads in their application as well. It would’ve been a system that would send specific ads to each user directly, based on their likes and other actions taken online. Likewise, it might be able to make purchases directly from a chat without having to leave the app itself. Facebook shops in this regard will speed up communication between the buyer and the store as the two apps are now fused. The updated conditions ensure that the app can collect and share data with any company that operates over Facebook.

Personal Information
The app also collects our personal information like our account, contact number, username, and even our profile photo, or the customized information included in the description area. Occasionally, we load our contacts and address book in the app to find out which of our other contacts use WhatsApp, so we are sharing our connection information as well.

Third Parties
Since we are sharing information about our contacts, it will not be wrong to say that our information will be shared from our other connections as well. So basically, it means that our information is very difficult to be controlled and many entities might gain access to our otherwise very personal information with minimum effort.

Location
WhatsApp knows where we are and even which room, we are currently sitting in. Just when we activate our service, we share where we are or see nearby locations of our connections. Now, also, although we might not be using our location features, it will know our location, the IP address we are using and area codes among other relevant information from our cellphone.

Communication
Despite all the things shared here, the app insists that all our information collection has a purpose. This is to facilitate the app’s operations as they provide their services. The app may collect information to provide us with better technical support, complete financial transactions, enhance, improve, and even offer more personalization options. So, WhatsApp has a point, when they receive our information, they will know how to improve their services even further.