WhatsApp has started sending in-app notifications to its users about a change in its Terms of Service and its privacy policy. WhatsApp users in India woke up to a notification prompt to accept the new Terms of Service and privacy policy, failing which the account will be deleted.
“WhatsApp is updating its terms and privacy policy,” the in-app notification read, along with the key updates, sent to both Android and iOS users.
The key updates include WhatsApp's service and it process the data of the users; how businesses can use Facebook hosted services to store and manage their WhatsApp chats; and how it partners with Facebook to offer integrations across the Facebook company products.
WhatsApp’s new terms and privacy policy will come into effect on February 8, 2021.
All users must accept new terms or their WhatsApp accounts will be deleted after February 8.
While the in-app notification does not show detailed terms of service and privacy policy, the same is update on WhatsApp website for those who want to read in detail.
Let's read WhatsApp's Terms of Service and privacy policy here:
Terms of Service
Connecting You With Other People. We provide, and always strive to improve, ways for you to communicate with other WhatsApp users including through messages, voice and video calls, sending images and video, showing your status, and sharing your location with others when you choose. We may provide a convenient platform that enables you to send and receive money to or from other users across our platform. WhatsApp works with partners, service providers, and affiliated companies to help us provide ways for you to connect with their services.
Communicating With Businesses. We provide, and always strive to improve, ways for you and businesses and other organizations, to communicate with each other using our Services, such as through order, transaction, and appointment information, delivery and shipping notifications, product and service updates, and marketing.
Enabling Access To Our Services. To operate our global Services, we need to store and distribute content and information in data centers and systems around the world, including outside your country of residence. The use of this global infrastructure is necessary and essential to provide our Services. This infrastructure may be owned or operated by our service providers including affiliated companies.
Affiliated Companies. We are part of the Facebook Companies. As part of the Facebook Companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, the Facebook Companies as described in WhatsApp's Privacy Policy, including to provide integrations which enable you to connect your WhatsApp experience with other Facebook Company Products; to ensure security, safety, and integrity across the Facebook Company Products; and to improve your ads and products experience across the Facebook Company Products.
Read full text of Terms of Service here
Privacy Policy
Information We Collect
WhatsApp must receive or collect some information to operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services, including when you install, access, or use our Services.
The types of information we receive and collect depend on how you use our Services. We require certain information to deliver our Services and without this we will not be able to provide our Services to you. For example, you must provide your mobile phone number to create an account to use our Services.
Our Services have optional features which, if used by you, require us to collect additional information to provide such features. You will be notified of such collection, as appropriate. If you choose not to provide the information needed to use a feature, you will be unable to use the feature. For example, you cannot share your location with your contacts if you do not permit us to collect your location data from your device. Permissions can be managed through your Settings menu on both Android and iOS devices.
Information You Provide
Your Account Information. You must provide your mobile phone number and basic information (including a profile name of your choice) to create a WhatsApp account. If you don’t provide us with this information, you will not be able to create an account to use our Services. You can add other information to your account, such as a profile picture and "about" information.
Your Messages. We do not retain your messages in the ordinary course of providing our Services to you. Instead, your messages are stored on your device and not typically stored on our servers. Once your messages are delivered, they are deleted from our servers. The following scenarios describe circumstances where we may store your messages in the course of delivering them:
Undelivered Messages. If a message cannot be delivered immediately (for example, if the recipient is offline), we keep it in encrypted form on our servers for up to 30 days as we try to deliver it. If a message is still undelivered after 30 days, we delete it.
Media Forwarding. When a user forwards media within a message, we store that media temporarily in encrypted form on our servers to aid in more efficient delivery of additional forwards.
We offer end-to-end encryption for our Services. End-to-end encryption means that your messages are encrypted to protect against us and third parties from reading them. Learn more about end-to-end encryption and how businesses communicate with you on WhatsApp.
Your Connections. You can use the contact upload feature and provide us, if permitted by applicable laws, with the phone numbers in your address book on a regular basis, including those of users of our Services and your other contacts. If any of your contacts aren’t yet using our Services, we’ll manage this information for you in a way that ensures those contacts cannot be identified by us. Learn more about our contact upload feature here. You can create, join, or get added to groups and broadcast lists, and such groups and lists get associated with your account information. You give your groups a name. You can provide a group profile picture or description.
Status Information. You may provide us your status if you choose to include one on your account. Learn how to use status on Android, iPhone, or KaiOS.
Transactions And Payments Data. If you use our payments services, or use our Services meant for purchases or other financial transactions, we process additional information about you, including payment account and transaction information. Payment account and transaction information includes information needed to complete the transaction (for example, information about your payment method, shipping details and transaction amount). If you use our payments services available in your country or territory, our privacy practices are described in the applicable payments privacy policy.
Read full text of privacy policy here
If you would like to further manage, change, limit, or delete your information, you can do that through the following tools:
Services Settings. You can change your Services settings to manage certain information available to other users. You can manage your contacts, groups, and broadcast lists, or use our “block” feature to manage the users with whom you communicate.
Changing Your Mobile Phone Number, Profile Name And Picture, And “About” Information. If you change your mobile phone number, you must update it using our in-app change number feature and transfer your account to your new mobile phone number. You can also change your profile name, profile picture, and "about" information at any time.
Deleting Your WhatsApp Account. You can delete your WhatsApp account at any time (including if you want to revoke your consent to our use of your information pursuant to applicable law) using our in-app delete my account feature. When you delete your WhatsApp account, your undelivered messages are deleted from our servers as well as any of your other information we no longer need to operate and provide our Services. Deleting your account will, for example, delete your account info and profile photo, delete you from all WhatsApp groups, and delete your WhatsApp message history. Be mindful that if you only delete WhatsApp from your device without using our in-app delete my account feature, your information will be stored with us for a longer period. Please remember that when you delete your account, it does not affect your information related to the groups you created or the information other users have relating to you, such as their copy of the messages you sent them.
You can learn more here about our data deletion and retention practices and about how to delete your account.
