Facebook, the Mark Zuckerberg led company has clarified that from the coming month of February 2021, the users of FB business unit WhatsApp should accept the truth that all of their data generated on the messaging app will be shared with other business subsidiaries of the social networking giant.
The change in privacy policies is said to take effect on the 8th of next month and will apply to all users across the world, expect those living in UK and areas where the latest set of GDPR rules came into effect May 2018.
In the latest update provided by WhatsApp in digital media, the users of the company will have no other choice except to accept the latest rule or else their account will be blocked.
As soon as this rule was circulated in the media since Jan 7th, 2021, millions of WhatsApp users apparently have dumped the app and switch to other instant communication apps such as Telegram, Signal and Snapchat.
Adding fuel was the latest tweet by Tesla Chief Elon Musk, who admitted that he is going to switch to Signal messaging app as WhatsApp is forcing its users to share their data with Facebook.
According to Statista’s latest analysis, Telegram picked up nearly 1.7m downloads and Signal gained 1.3m downloads from the day WhatsApp announced about the privacy change.
When compared to downloads, the installation process was also affected for WhatsApp as the installations fell by 13% i.e. 10.3 million downloads when compared to the first seven days of Jan 2021.
FB is arguing that the latest change is to make its future services better as the data share will assist it in helping, operating, providing, improving, understanding, customizing, supporting and marketing its services in a more precise way.
