New year and new changes. WhatsApp, the well-known mobile messaging application, has decided to modify its security policies. These changes, as Facebook has well explained, will take place from February 8 of this year.
Probably, if you are a WhatsApp user, in these first days of the year you will have encountered a warning message when trying to access. This is because the well-known messaging application has decided to change its conditions and privacy policies, as it announced at the end of last year. This change will force users who use it to share their personal data with Facebook (owner of the app).
By accepting the new terms and conditions, the user will allow the application or companies such as Facebook and Twitter to have almost total access to their activities, which include text messages, contacts, purchases and interactions with third parties, among others.
According to the telecommunications company, the changes will take effect on February 8. The user, in order to continue using the application, must accept these conditions. If you reject them, you will not be able to continue using it.
However, this new obligation will only affect users who reside outside the European Union. Both EU and UK citizens will not be affected by the new platform conditions. Instead, this warning message goes out to all users. Why does this happen?. As Facebook has explained, all users must accept them even if it does not apply to European accounts.
Facebook's decision to link more closely with WhatsApp is a response against Apple, as last year it introduced a feature that allowed users to decline to be tracked by Facebook. This fact harmed the advertising business of Mark Zuckerberg's company, which used this tracking to collect personal data from users and thus later sell them to third parties in order to personalize their ads.
After the American company announced this modification in its terms and conditions, thousands of Internet users have chosen to explore other types of platforms to get rid of these measures imposed by WhatsApp on its users. A decrease in downloads of approximately 11% has even been observed in these first days of January.