Social media networks are playing an important role in all of our lives and it is becoming an essential part to stay connected with our friends and family members in this advanced world. Many people irrespective of their age group use these networks, and it gives a lot of opportunities to explore the outside world.
Social media sites are popular among all the people, and it did not limit its services only by connecting the user with their friends and families. These networks are highly useful for the business professionals to promote and enhance their new business. They are providing immediate updates about the happenings all around the world, and it acts as a big platform to promote any products or services.
Few most popular social networking sites are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, and more. These sites are offering many services to its users and have a huge volume of users. Among all the sites, Facebook and Whatsapp are the most popular social media networks, and both of the sites are having more than one billion users.
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FACEBOOK ACQUIRED WHATSAPP
Facebook bought Whatsapp in February 2014 for nearly 19.3 billion US dollars, and the popular messaging app also introduced many new features for its loyal customers. After the acquisition of Whatsapp by Facebook, the Whatsapp has updated on a regular basis and obtained more revenue.
It also resulted in the migration of the users to other messaging services such as Line, Telegram, and more. After this acquisition, Line announced that it have observed two million new users were signed up to their service and similarly Telegram claimed that it had observed eight million additional downloads of its application.The government of Iran also blocked the access of Whatsapp in its country, and the reason was announced that the Whatsapp obtained by the American Zionist, Mark Zuckerberg.
During the acquisition, Whatsapp published a post that stated that the app would operate independently and remain to be an independent company. There was no any partnership between the two companies and therefore no any changes can be made in the core principles. It also promised that the privacy of the users would be maintained securely and users’ data will not be disclosed to any other third parties.
WHATSAPP’S NEW PRIVACY POLICY
In August 2016, Whatsapp has updated its privacy terms and policies for the first since 2012 and announced that the new policy would help the users for their businesses. In its notes, it stated that after it joined the Facebook, many new features are rolled out to the users such as Whatsapp voice calling, video calling, the end-to-end encryption and more.
The statement also showed that the Whatsapp was going to coordinate with the Facebook and connected the users’ phone number with Facebook’s systems; hence Facebook can provide better friend suggestions to the people and also display the more relevant advertisements. There can be no any changes to the private communications, and it promised to provide simplest, fastest and high reliable user experience.
OPT-OUT OPTION FOR ITS USERS
Whatsapp has made many promises to safeguard the security and privacy of the users, and it has also introduced end-to-end encryption to prevent the users’ information from the attack of the third party. The app also promised that there was no any compromise in the privacy policy of the app during the acquisition by Facebook.
But the announcement of its new privacy policy has become a huge shock to the Whatsapp users, and it was an unexpected move of Whatsapp. The main changes observed in the Whatsapp’s privacy policy was that the Whatsapp is going to share their users’ information with its parent company Facebook, to give personalized ads and improved friend suggestions and to allow the businesses to interact with the customers. The app also provides a time limit of thirty days for its users to opt-out of its updated new privacy policy.
DETAILS OF OLD & NEW PRIVACY POLICY
The previous privacy policy of the Whatsapp was highly user-friendly, and many peoples liked it. The app has only collected the information of users’ mobile number, phonebook lists, and the users’ device information. It also promised that no any information would be leaked to any other parties and there would be no any advertisements of the third party, and none of the users’ information shared for marketing or commercial purposes.
But the new policy of Whatsapp has collected a number of information from the customers, and the following lists provided the details of the Whatsapp’s new privacy policy. The app will collect the user’s phone number, profile photo, username, status message, last seen the status and online status.
It also collects the users’ e-mail id when the user communicate with their customer service and it also not assured that the collected e-mail id will be used only for the customer service purpose.
The details of the device, such as operating system information, hardware model, IP address, browser information, mobile operator information that includes device identifiers and phone number.It also collects the information about the message and calls log of the user.
The new policy did not place any restrictions on the sharing of data and the type of the third party with whom the collected information was shared. So, it showed that not the contact numbers only shared with the Facebook to provide targeted ads and any of the above information can also be shared with Facebook and even also with the other third parties.
CHANGE IS LEGAL
While viewing the changes made by Whatsapp, it may have appeared as the Whatsapp was illegal, but it was legal. If any organization or company wants to change its privacy policy, it must first inform their customers about the change and must get acceptance from them for the change. If the change was made without any announcement to the users or without providing an option for an opt-out mechanism, then that change will be considered as illegal. From illegal i get a point that there are many torrent sites which are legal now.
WATCHDOG’s WARNING
After the announcement of this new policy, Watchdog, the UK’s data protection has sent a warning notice to the Whatsapp and announced that it planned to investigate about the arrangement. It stated that this change happened in the privacy policy of Whatsapp can affect some people, and some people can consider this as a better service, but many of them can worry about the lack of control. The Watchdog also stated that they were aimed to ensure the transparency of the companies while sharing the user’s data. The Whatsapp has answered that they were ready to provide all the information about the new change.
About the Writer –
Anand Rajendran is CEO and Co-Founder of Zoplay, the best PHP scripts development company located in India. Zoplay is a part of Casperon Technologies a leading social and mobile development company which is developing, leading innovative and collaborative software development teams to deliver major software applications like SCIMBO – Whatsapp Clone Script. I’m a Tech Geek, Digital marketing expert, Entrepreneur, and Atheist who loves to write everything about PHP Scripts and mobile application development.