Changes to the privacy terms by WhatsApp have led to an exodus of users to rivals Telegram and Signal.
WhatsApp, a Facebook messaging service that has more than two billion users, recently announced controversial changes to its privacy terms, triggering a massive exodus of users to competing platforms, notably Telegram and Signal.
Users outside of Europe who do not accept the new terms before February 8 will be cut off from the messaging app.
WhatsApp says the changes will help it integrate better with Facebook, but technology experts and privacy advocates have raised concerns about data security.
Here are four things to know about the problem:
What does WhatsApp’s new privacy look like?
Under the new terms, WhatsApp reserves the right to share user data, including location and phone number, with parent company Facebook Inc and other apps owned by social network giant Instagram and Messenger. Data sharing was optional until now, but will become mandatory after February 8. Tech experts say the move aims to monetize WhatsApp.
Why does it cause flight of users?
Many users are wary of the move, as Facebook has a poor track record of handling user data.
Some privacy activists called on WhatsApp users on Twitter to switch to apps like Signal and Telegram, questioning the ‘take our data grab or go’ movement.
Pavel Durov, the Russian-born founder of Telegram, said, “People no longer want to trade their privacy for free services.”
What other competing apps are benefiting?
According to data analytics company Sensor Tower, more than 100,000 users have installed Signal on Apple and Google app stores in the past two days, while Telegram has fetched nearly 2.2 million downloads.
WhatsApp new installs were down 11 percent in the first seven days of 2021 compared to the week before, but that still amounted to an estimated 10.5 million downloads worldwide, Sensor Tower said.
Both Telegram and Signal are encrypted messaging apps, which provides better privacy. They do not allow outsiders or the platform itself to see the content of the messages.
What is WhatsApp doing about it?
The company tried to reassure users by saying in a blog post that WhatsApp cannot see their private messages or hear their calls, and neither can Facebook.
“We don’t keep logs of whom everyone sends or calls. We can’t see your shared location and neither can Facebook, ”it added.
According to WhatsApp, location data and message content are end-to-end encrypted.
But other metadata such as call records, location, financial information, etc. can be shared when using WhatsApp.
“We’re giving businesses the ability to use Facebook’s secure hosting services to manage WhatsApp chats with their customers, answer questions and send useful information such as receipts,” WhatsApp said in the post.
“Whether you communicate with a business by phone, email or WhatsApp, it can see what you say and use that information for its own marketing purposes, which may include ads on Facebook.”