WhatsApp has asked its two billion users to agree to new terms of service, allowing it to share more data with its parent company Facebook. An update that worries users of the messaging application. On January 7, the popular WhatsApp messaging app came under fire for asking its nearly two billion users to agree to new terms of use, allowing it to share more data with its parent company Facebook. . Users who decline will no longer be able to access their account from February 8. This development is currently only partially implemented in Europe.
#WhatsApp updated its Privacy Policy and Terms of Services, making data-sharing with Facebook mandatory for all.
IMPORTANT — You must accept it before February 8; otherwise, your account will be DELETED.
#facebook #datasecurity pic.twitter.com/xnE5rFDliG
— palak (@impalaklive) January 6, 2021
The group seeks to monetize its platform by allowing advertisers to contact their customers via WhatsApp – or even sell their products directly there – as is already the case in India, for example. According to Le Monde, the data that can be shared between WhatsApp and Facebook’s application ecosystem (including Instagram and Messenger) includes phone number, IP addresses and user device information, but not content. messages, which remain encrypted.
“Updates to privacy policies are common in the industry and we provide users with all the information necessary to verify the changes that will take effect on February 8,” defended a spokesperson for the group in a statement sent. to AFP.
France safe from this new data sharing? The new WhastApp terms of use, however, differ between the European Union, for example – where the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been in force since 2018 – and the rest of the world. In the case of the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom, personal data should therefore only be used to develop the functionalities offered to WhatsApp Business accounts. “WhatsApp does not share the data of its users in Europe with Facebook in order for Facebook to use them to improve its products or its advertisements”, thus assured a spokesperson for the messaging system. For the time being, within the EU, an information message indicating this development, which is lighter than that expected for the rest of the world, is only displayed on versions of the application installed in English, as Le Monde said. On Twitter, many users were alarmed on January 7 to have given their consent without having read in detail the changes induced. Tesla boss Elon Musk – who is now the richest man in the world – suggested in a tweet to use the competing Signal app.
Use Signal
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021
“If the only way to refuse [this modification] is to stop using WhatsApp, then the consent is forced and the processing of personal data is illegal”, denounced to AFP Arthur Messaud, lawyer for the association for the defense of Internet users La Quadrature du net.
Asked by AFP, the Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés (Cnil), French regulator of the Internet, recalled that the takeover of WhatsApp by Facebook for 22 billion dollars in 2014 – and in particular the conditions of data transfer – was under review at European level. “This file should find a way out in 2021”, according to the Cnil.
When asked about the matter, European Commission spokespersons recalled that Facebook was fined 110 million euros in 2017 for providing inaccurate information during the EU investigation into its takeover of the company. ‘WhatsApp mobile application. Facebook has been for months – like the other Gafam (Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft) – in the sights of European and American authorities who accuse these conglomerates of the new millennium for practices deemed anti-competitive. While the Europeans are working on potentially very restrictive new regulations on the subject, the American justice validated in the spring a fine of five billion dollars imposed on Facebook for not having known how to protect personal data.
