Hi Guys,
I wanted to let you know that Facebook (the owner of WhatsApp) has recently announced that WhatsApp users are about to see a whole new raft of rules that they will be forced to accept in order to continue using the messaging application. At the moment users have the option to ‘Leave until Later’ but eventually they will need to accept or they will need to find another messaging app.
You can read the new terms yourself when you are next promoted but in my opinion these are the two that you should be concerned most about:
“As part of the Facebook family of companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, this family of companies,”
And
“We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings.”
At the moment the “information” collected by WhatsApp is not chats, since those are encrypted and therefore can’t be seen by the company even if it wanted to. The information is personal data such as the phone number of users and their contacts, profile names and pictures, and diagnostic data. This could change at any time.
If I were you I would look at using a more secure option such as Signal messenger. Signal source code is open source and peer-reviewed making it a much better alternative than WhatsApp. Signal is also not going to share your data with Facebook. If you are going to keep WhatsApp please be extra careful about what you say. Everything is logged and recorded. If you would not be happy having your chat log read back to you in a crowded place I would not say it all.
Let me know if you need anything at all.
Thanks and best wishes,
Max Roberts
Incognito Privacy Care Team