On January 6, 2021, WhatsApp announced an update to its Terms of Service and Privacy Agreement, and notified it in the app.
In its pop-up in-app notification, there are mainly three points:
■ WhatsApp’s services and how it uses user data
■ Facebook business users can use and manage their WhatsApp chats
■ WhatsApp will cooperate with Facebook and provide integration across Facebook’s products
And it is required to make a choice before February 8th, otherwise it will not be used.WhatsApp services。
As soon as the notification came out, it immediately caused an uproar. Everyone was generally worried that Facebook would monitor users’ chats and target users based on the chat content.Place ads。
Elon Musk even called on everyone to switch to Signal on Twitter
Most people actually don’t have the time and energy to study the details of the terms.
The updated terms of service triggered a wave of social migration, resulting in the downloads of Telegram and Signal ranking among the top three in the global App download list in January.
In response to user concerns and media skepticism—even the Indian government has asked WhatsApp to explain the data security of its users in India.
WhatsApp responded a lot by posting it on its Twitter, blog, and even pinned it to the top of users’ WhatsApp Status.
Reiterating that its end-to-end encryption has never changed, users’ chat messages cannot be monitored by WhatsApp, let alone Facebook and other third parties.
Mobile phone numbers and user address books will not be leaked.
WhatsApp does not collect and save user chat information on the server nor share user data with Facebook or other third parties.
In fact, the main part of this change in the terms of service is the chat section for WhatsApp users and businesses
To be precise, only companies that use Google Cloud Storage and iCloud Cloud Storage can use Facebook's technical solutions to communicate with WhatsApp users and use their chat content.
This is followed by a more detailed elaboration of the information collected.
For example, device and connection information, location information.
In fact, it has already collected this information, but this time it is more clear in the terms.
Going further, WhatsApp elaborated on the use scenarios of cooperation with Facebook to provide new products and services.
On the latest pinned WhatsApp tweet, WhatsApp reiterated four points:
■ We are always committed to your privacy
■ No one can view your chat messages with family and friends, including WhatsApp
■ This update provides more information about our data practices and messaging between businesses and their customers on WhatsApp
■ Our new terms and conditions have been postponed to May 15th, so you have plenty of time to learn more details
This incident can be regarded as a big event in the history of WhatsApp.
The inspiration for all of us through this incident is:
First, always have a sense of respect for users
The implementation of a new policy needs to be fully understood and discussed by everyone, and we cannot let everyone make choices in an arrogant manner.
WhatsApp has 2 billion monthly active users. People choose WhatsApp because of its privacy protection and ease of use.
But water can both carry and capsize a boat. Although it is difficult for everyone to abandon you, over time, the power of trends will damage the foundation of WhatsApp.
Second, the integration of WhatsApp and Facebook is accelerating and will begin to accelerate in 2020.
Technically, WhatsApp has begun to use some of Facebook's infrastructure and service framework.
In terms of products, WhatsApp has launched product cabinets and shopping carts, and has opened up payments in India and Brazil. Users can have direct WhatsApp conversations with merchants on Facebook pages.
Some other functions, such as QR codes, dynamic stickers, and temporary messages have been launched, and the dark mode has been in internal testing for a long time, and multi-device login is about to be released. . .
