WhatsApp Will Delete Your Account If You Don’t Agree Sharing Data With Facebook

“Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA,” opens
WhatsApp’s privacy policy^[1]. “Since we started
WhatsApp, we’ve aspired to build our Services with a set of strong
privacy principles in mind.”

But come February 8, 2021, this opening statement will no longer
find a place in the policy.

The Facebook-owned messaging service is alerting users in India
of an update to its terms of service^[2]
and privacy policy^[3]
that’s expected to go into effect next month.

The “key updates” concern how it processes user data, “how
businesses can use Facebook hosted services to store and manage
their WhatsApp chats,” and “how we partner with Facebook to offer
integrations across the Facebook Company Products.”

Users failing to agree to the revised terms by the cut-off date
will have their accounts deleted, the company said in the
notification.

WhatsApp’s Terms of Service was last updated on January 28,
2020, while its current Privacy Policy was enforced on July 20,
2020.

Facebook Company Products refers^[4]
to the social media giant’s family of services^[5], including its flagship
Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, Boomerang, Threads,
Portal-branded devices, Oculus VR headsets (when using a Facebook
account), Facebook Shops, Spark AR Studio, Audience Network, and
NPE Team^[6] apps.

It, however, doesn’t include Workplace, Free Basics, Messenger
Kids, and Oculus Products that are tied to Oculus accounts.

What’s Changed in its Privacy Policy?

In its updated policy, the company expanded on the “Information
You Provide” section with specifics about payment account and
transaction information collected during purchases made using the
app and has replaced the “Affiliated Companies” section with a new
“How We Work With Other Facebook Companies” that goes into detail
about how it uses and shares the information gathered from WhatsApp
with other Facebook products or third-parties.

This encompasses promoting safety, security, and integrity,
providing Portal and Facebook Pay integrations, and last but not
least, “improving their services and your experiences using them,
such as making suggestions for you (for example, of friends or
group connections, or of interesting content), personalizing
features and content, helping you complete purchases and
transactions, and showing relevant offers and ads across the
Facebook Company Products.”

One section that’s received a major rewrite is “Automatically
Collected Information,” which covers “Usage and log Information,”
“Device And Connection Information,” and “Location
Information.”

“We collect information about your activity on our Services,
like service-related, diagnostic, and performance information. This
includes information about your activity (including how you use our
Services, your Services settings, how you interact with others
using our Services (including when you interact with a business),
and the time, frequency, and duration of your activities and
interactions), log files, and diagnostic, crash, website, and
performance logs and reports. This also includes information about
when you registered to use our Services; the features you use like
our messaging, calling, Status, groups (including group name, group
picture, group description), payments or business features; profile
photo, “about” information; whether you are online, when you last
used our Services (your “last seen”); and when you last updated
your “about” information.”

With regards to the device and connection data, WhatsApp spelled
out the pieces of information it gathers: hardware model, operating
system information, battery level, signal strength, app version,
browser information, mobile network, connection information
(including phone number, mobile operator or ISP), language and time
zone, IP address, device operations information, and identifiers
(including identifiers unique to Facebook Company Products
associated with the same device or account).

“Even if you do not use our location-related features, we use IP
addresses and other information like phone number area codes to
estimate your general location (e.g., city and country),” WhatsApp
updated policy reads.

Concerns About Metadata Collection

While WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, its privacy policy
offers an insight into the scale and wealth of metadata that’s
amassed in the name of improving and supporting the service. Even
worse, all of this data is linked to a user’s identity.

Apple’s response to this unchecked metadata collection is
privacy labels^[7], now live for first- and
third-party apps distributed via the App Store, that aim to help
users better understand an app’s privacy practices and “learn about
some of the data types an app may collect, and whether that data is
linked to them or used to track them.”

The rollout forced WhatsApp to issue a statement^[8]
last month. “We must collect some information to provide a reliable
global communications service,” it said, adding “we minimize the
categories of data that we collect” and “we take measures to
restrict access to that information.”

In stark contrast, Signal collects no metadata, whereas Apple’s
iMessage^[9]
makes use of only email address (or phone number), search history,
and a device ID to attribute a user uniquely.

There’s no denying that privacy policies and terms of service
agreements are often long, boring, and mired in obtuse legalese as
if deliberately designed with an intention to confuse users. But
updates like this are the reason it’s essential to read them
instead of blindly consenting without really knowing what you are
signing up for. After all, it is your data.