WhatsApp Postpones Privacy Update Plan Amid Rising Concerns
Italy emerging on front lines of Europe’s privacy clash with WhatsApp over new rules
Rome: Italy’s privacy regulator on Friday formally opened up a probe into the policies of digital messaging app WhatsApp, a day after the entity called on the European Commission to look into WhatsApp’s new terms and conditions initially set to enter into force next month.
WhatsApp is the world’s largest digital messaging platform, with more than 2 billion monthly users as of October 2020, according to the data firm Statista.
The company announced this month that a new set of terms and conditions would enter into force starting February 8. On Friday, the company announced it would delay the planned update until at least May 15.
Assuming the update does go into effect, users will be required to agree to the terms in order to continue using the service after that date.
The new terms and conditions are designed to make it easier for parent company Facebook to use WhatsApp and other subsidiaries including photo posting site Instagram as payment services, according to analysts quoted in Italian media stories.
In the European Union (EU), which passed a data protection law in 2018, the changes to terms and conditions will be minimal: WhatsApp will have greater access to email addresses and limited information on the phone where the app is installed, but it will not be able to use that information for targeted advertising, according to privacy attorney Ernesto Belisario, who was quoted in Corriere della Sera, one of Italy’s most circulated newspapers.
But outside the EU, that information can be used for marketing purposes.
WhatsApp on Friday announced that it has postponed its planned privacy update, which will give users more time to review the policy and accept the terms of the Facebookowned messaging app.
The decision to postpone the privacy update has been taken due to “misinformation causing concern” among people, the company said. “We’re now moving back the date on which people will be asked to review and accept the terms. No one will have their account suspended or deleted on February 8. We’re also going to do a lot more to clear up the misinformation around how privacy and security works on
WhatsApp. We’ll then go to people gradually to review the policy at their own pace before new business options are available on May 15,” the blog post read.
The New York Times reported that since the announcement of the privacy update many users and some media outlets interpreted the notification as a marked shift in WhatsApp’s data-sharing practices, mistakenly believing that the company could now read people’s conversations and other personal data. The concerns resulted in people switching to other messaging services such as Signal and Telegram. This week, Signal became the No. 1 app in India, one of WhatsApp’s biggest markets, on Apple and Android phones, the New York Times said. Reassuring people on these concerns, the company said, “the update includes new options people will have to message a business on
WhatsApp, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data. While not everyone shops with a business on WhatsApp today, we think that more people will choose to do so in the future and it’s important people are aware of these services. This update does not expand our ability to share data with