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Many users abandon the popular WhatsApp messaging app after a storm of criticism against the new terms to come.
WhatsApp wants to clarify the new terms after many users have climbed to the roof. Stock Photography.
Under the newly announced terms, WhatsApp data will be shared with parent company Facebook. It has annoyed many users and led many to switch to alternative messaging services such as Signal and Telegram, various outlets report.
Not surprisingly, many people wonder what happens to the messages you send in the app, says Mikael Herrala from data security company F-Secure. But this is not really a major change under the new conditions. Partly because in Sweden we are protected by the European data protection regulation GDPR and partly because the new conditions mainly refer to various data that Facebook wants to collect, not the messages it sends and receives.
Facebook simply wants to profile users across all of its services to get as much information about them as possible.
The key issue for users is primarily privacy, says Mikael Herrala, who wants to advise everyone to think about what is important to them when choosing a messaging service.
– Is it important that you use an application that is one of the easiest to use, flexible and perhaps the most fun in the world? So maybe you should use Whatsapp, but it also means you trust Facebook.
Anyone doubting Facebook should consider alternatives, including Signal, which works hard to preserve user privacy, he says.
– But then you have the challenge that the app may not be that easy to use, or that Signal doesn’t have that many users. Then you have to ask your friends to register there so that you can communicate with them.
– Show that they are working to clarify this. We are protected by the GDPR in the EU, and we simply have to trust that part to work, says Mikael Herrala.
According to WhatsApp, the purpose of the update is, among other things, that users in the future can communicate with companies in the application.
Already today, WhatsApp shares certain types of personal data, including the user’s phone number and IP address, with Facebook.
